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Distinct Element Analysis of Trapdoor Test for Cemented Soils

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Proceedings of GeoShanghai 2018 International Conference: Fundamentals of Soil Behaviours (GSIC 2018)

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Abstract

The trapdoor test is a widely employed experimental method to investigate the change of the stress distribution on engineering structure caused by the tunnel excavation in tunnel engineering. In this paper, the trapdoor tests for cemented soils with different cohesions were simulated with the Distinct Element Method (DEM), where the effects of cohesion on the failure mode and the earth pressure on the trapdoor were presented and the measured results were compared with experimental data. The results show that the DEM simulation can provide numerical results similar to the experimental data, such as the failure mode and earth pressure distribution. The soil fails at the end of the test with the damage zone, shear band and the influential zone formed in the ground. The earth pressure on the trapdoor decreases to a minimum value firstly and then increases to a constant value with the lowering of the trapdoor. The range of influential zone and the minimum earth on the trapdoor decreases with the increase of cohesion.

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Acknowledgements

The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China with Grant No. 51639008 and 51579178, which are greatly appreciated.

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Correspondence to Mingjing Jiang .

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Jiang, M., Du, W., Xi, B. (2018). Distinct Element Analysis of Trapdoor Test for Cemented Soils. In: Zhou, A., Tao, J., Gu, X., Hu, L. (eds) Proceedings of GeoShanghai 2018 International Conference: Fundamentals of Soil Behaviours. GSIC 2018. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0125-4_80

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