Modelling of viscous effects in natural clays
A new approach to allow the modelling of the viscous behaviour of natural clay soils, including creep, stress relaxation and the effects of applied strain rate on soil stiffness, has been developed based on the BRICK constitutive model (published by Simpson in 1992). The new model, "strain rate-dependent" (SRD) BRICK, was used in a series of simulations to demonstrate its capabilities in predicting realistic behaviour during one-dimensional compression and undrained triaxial tests in which applied strain rates were varied. Triaxial stress path tests conducted by Gasparre et al. in 2007 to assess the influence of creep, resulting from recent stress history, on soil stiffness were also simulated. The observed trends concerning the stiffness at small strains were successfully modelled.
Refinement of the Hardening Soil model within the small strain range
The popularity of the elasto-plastic Hardening Soil (HS) model is based on simple parameter identification from standard testing and empirical formulas. The HS model is implemented in many commercial FE codes designed to analyse geotechnical problems. In its basic version, the stress–strain behaviour within the elastic range is subject to the hypoelastic power law, which assures the barotropy of the elastic stiffness. However, a proper modelling within the small strain range, i.e. strain-induced stiffness degradation and correct reproduction of the hysteretic behaviour, was one of the most important drawbacks in the HS formulation. The first small strain stiffness extension to the HS model was proposed by Benz (Small strain stiffness of soils and its numerical consequences, 2007), and the new model was called Hardening Soil Small (HSS). Despite the simple isotropic formulation, its applicability was proved in various numerical simulations in geotechnics. However, the HSS formulation exhibits a serious fault known in the literature as overshooting, i.e. uncontrolled reset of the loading memory after tiny unloading–reloading cycles. The authors' main aim was to retain the set of material parameters for the HSS formulation and to propose a new small strain extension to the HS model without overshooting. The new proposal is based on the Brick model which represents the concept of nested yield surfaces in strain space. The implementation aspects of the new HS-Brick model are described, and its performance is presented in some element tests and selected boundary value problems by comparisons with the HSS formulation.
Preparation of hydrophilic poly(vinyl butyral) hollow fiber membrane via thermally induced phase separation
Abstract Hydrophilic microporous hollow fiber membranes were prepared via thermally induced phase separation (TIPS). Poly(vinyl butyral) (PVB) and three kinds of polyethylene glycols (PEG) with the molecular weight of 200, 400 and 600 were used as polymer and diluents. In all cases, liquid–liquid (L–L) phase separation occurred and asymmetric cellular structures with the smaller pores at the outer surface were obtained. The properties of membranes such as pore size, water permeability, solute rejection and intensity were investigated by changing molecular weight of PEG, concentration of PVB, composition of the bath and air gap distance. The smaller molecular weight of PEG, the more PEG in the bath and the shorter air gap distance resulted in the higher water permeability, the lower solute rejection property and the lower mechanical strength.