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Modelling and comparison of different types of random fields: case of a real earth dam

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Abstract

The random field (RF) theory is widely used for describing the soil spatial variability in geotechnical engineering. This article presents soil variability modellings by using different types of RF-based on the available measurements of an earth dam. The effects of these RFs on dam reliability are investigated as well. The studied dam is well-documented, and there are many geo-localized measurements for the dry density. These measurements are firstly used to estimate the basic parameters of unconditional-stationary RFs and are then explored to define two more complex RFs (one is conditional RF and the other considers the mean variation with depth). The three mentioned types of RFs are all implemented in the same reliability analysis procedure for comparison. The results demonstrate that using different RFs for soil spatial modelling would induce insignificant differences in terms of reliability results if the dam construction was well controlled (careful selection for the construction material and controlled compaction). Therefore, a simple RF (unconditional-stationary) is enough to obtain satisfactory results in the case of carefully controlled dams during their construction. Otherwise, conditional RFs are recommended if more accurate results are needed, given that this type of RF is conditioned on the available data and can consider the non-stationarity of a soil property.

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Acknowledgements

The first author thanks gratefully the China Scholarship Council, China (CSC No. 201608070075) for providing him with a PhD Scholarship for his research work.

Funding

The first author is financially supported by China Scholarship Council under the grant number of 201608070075.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP (Institute of Engineering Université Grenoble Alpes), 3SR, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Xiangfeng Guo & Daniel Dias

  2. Antea Group, 2-6 Place du Général de Gaulle, 92160, Antony, France

    Daniel Dias

  3. INRAE, Aix-Marseille University, RECOVER, 13182, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Claudio Carvajal & Laurent Peyras

  4. Université Clermont Auvergne, Institut Pascal, CNRS, 63000, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Pierre Breul

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  1. Xiangfeng Guo
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  2. Daniel Dias
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Contributions

Conceptualization: CC, LP; methodology: XG, DD; formal analysis and investigation: XG, PB; writing—original draft preparation: XG; writing—review and editing: DD, CC, LP, PB; supervision: DD, CC, LP, PB.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Dias.

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The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Data availability

The data used in this study were provided by a construction company. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data could be available on request with the permission of this company.

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The codes developed in this study are available on request.

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Guo, X., Dias, D., Carvajal, C. et al. Modelling and comparison of different types of random fields: case of a real earth dam. Engineering with Computers 38 (Suppl 5), 4529–4543 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-021-01495-4

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