Test on Mechanical Properties of Cemented Soils Using Secondary Development Data Acquisition Test System
A secondary development of computer aided data acquisition test system is performed in order to improve the disadvantages of original system. In this way, the qualified influences of cement content and curing time on yield strength and stiffness of soil can be automatic acquisition in consolidated undrained triaxial tests. The data collected from the system show that the deviatoric stress of soil increases with increasing axial strain initially followed by a relatively smooth decline after yield point. Yield strength increases with increasing cement content and curing time at the same strain. A well-defined linear relationship between yield strength and cement content are observed and also the relationship between yield strength and curing time. Finally, a linear function is defined to express the linear relationship between yield strength and those two factors and corresponding linear coefficients are obtained through a multiple regression analysis of test data. Stiffness of specimens shows an initial sharp degradation followed by smooth attenuation with increasing axial strain. The addition of cement and long curing time can effectively improve the stiffness of specimens especially at low strain areas.
Circular footings on a cemented layer above weak foundation soil
This work proposes a method for predicting the behavior of shallow footings bearing on an upper layer of processed cemented soil that overlies a lower layer of weakly bonded residual soil with a high void ratio. The paper describes the results of a series of field plate tests and numerical simulations. The results lead to a semi-empirical method for designing shallow foundations on a double-layer system. The method has been validated by comparison of predicted values with results from a separate series of plate-loading tests. For engineering practice, the proposed method provides acceptable predictions of bearing capacities and loadsettlement curves.Key words: footings, cemented layer, layered system, weakly bonded, high void ratio.
Time and Heritage
As a historian studying what can be considered a form of intellectual history, I have slowly come to adopt Michel de Certeau’s observation made at the end of the 1980s that ‘objectifying the past, for the last three centuries, has undoubtedly left unconsidered time within a discipline that has continued to use it as a taxonomic instrument’. To a certain degree, time has become commonplace for the historian who has preserved or instrumentalized it. It is not considered because it is inconceivable, but because we do not think of it or, more simply, we do not think about it. As a historian attempting to pay attention to the time I’m living in, I have thus, like many others, noticed the swift development of the category of the present until it has become obvious that the present is omnipresent. This is what I refer to here as ‘presentism’.