JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING GEOLOGY
Year:2018 | Volume:11 | Issue:4 |Papers Count:7

Introduction Determination of the mechanical properties of rock materials has been remained as a challenge for engineering geologists. In-situ tests are rarely used to determine the mechanical properties of rocks due to difficulties in sample preparation, performing and interpretation of the results, high costs as well as the required long time for doing the experiments. The common approach to determine the mechanical properties of rock materials is through conducting laboratory experiments and estimation the in-situ properties based on these laboratory results. This approximation, which is called scale effect, has been remained as a challenge for engineering geologists and practical rock engineers for decades...

Introduction One of the most important 1-ring aromatic organic pollutants is phenol and its related compounds. These compounds are classified as hazardous wastes base on U. S. EPA primary contaminates list. The phenolic compounds are very poisonous and these are harmful for human health and also for other biota. To control the movement of such hazardous organic waste in a contaminated soil, solidification/stabilization (S/S) process can be an effective alternative. Due to the negative impact of organic compounds on the cement hydration, the cement-based S/S may be not effective for controlling the movement of such pollutants. To avoid these effects, using some additives during solidification period has been recommended. One of the proposed of such compounds is organophilic clay that is the modified montmorillonite by quaternary ammonium salts (QAS)...

Introduction Exploitation or processing of ores is usually associated with the production of a large amount of waste materials. These materials often have a high concentration of metals which can enter the environment through weathering or erosion. It is well-known that the measurement of the total concentration of metals cannot be an adequate for evaluating the pollution status of soil. Therefore, in most studies on soil contamination, bioavailability content of metals is determined by which can predicate the fate of the metals entering into the other parts of the environment such as plants, water or human food chain. The bioavailability of metals in the soil environment is the exchangeable and absorbable metals for plants, which depends on their exchangeability and absorption by soil organisms especially plants. This is also the function of the chemical form of each element in the soil. The main purpose of the present study was to measure the total concentrations along with the bioavailable content of metals in soils and plants around the Irankuh mine tailing dams...

Introduction Landslides are natural events that one or more factors can effect in its occurrence that each of them plays a special role in this field. The hazard assessments of this phenomenon are a complicated problem due to the interference of the effective factors in its occurrence. The uncertainty that is due to ambiguous conditions of geology characteristics, hydrology, tectonics, land cover, rain, erosion, temperature fluctuations in the slope instability demonstrate the benefit of accurate methods in the study of slope instability. Since the prediction of the landslide occurrence is out of the power of current knowledge, identifying sensitive areas to landslide and ranking it can protect us from landslide dangers. According to preliminary estimates, annually 140 million dollar financial damages inflict by landslides over the country, while the loss of unrecoverable natural resources is not counted. In general, the ultimate goal of studying landslides can be found the ways that to reduce damages caused by them. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare the landslide hazard map...

Introduction Carbonate soils are different from silicate soils respect to their origination and engineering behavior. Particles of these soils are mainly residual or debris of sea animals or plants with large amount of calcium carbonate. They also may be chemical sedimentation of calcium carbonate over other soil particles in specific region of seas and oceans. The most important characteristic of these soils is the crushability of their aggregates under loading which is mainly due their shape and also small voids inside of them. Crushability and subsequent volume changes in carbonate soils have caused many engineering problems in some geotechnical structures such as shallow foundations, piles and piers...

Introduction Recently, several studies on buried pipelines have been conducted to determine their uplift behavior as a function of burial depth, type of soil, and degree of compaction, using mathematical, numerical and experimental modeling. One of the geosynthetics applications is the construction of a reinforced soil foundation to increase the bearing capacity of shallow spread footings. Recently, a new reinforcement element to improve the bearing capacity of soils has been introduced and numerically studied by Hatef et al. The main idea behind the new system is adding anchors to ordinary geogrid. This system has been named as Grid-Anchor (it is not a trade name yet). In this system, a foundation that is supported by the soil reinforced with Grid-Anchor is used; the anchors are made from 10×10×10 mm cubic elements. The obtained results indicate that the Grid-Anchor system of reinforcing can increase the bearing capacity 2. 74 times greater than that for ordinary geogrid and 4. 43 times greater than for non-reinforced sand...

Introduction Determination of in situ stress-direction and magnitude are prerequisite for any oil well drilling and oil field development such as hydraulic fracturing. One of the simplest and most widely used methods is called borehole breakout analysis. Breakouts are compression fractures made in the direction of minimum horizontal in situ stress (Sh), if drilling mud pressure be lower than optimum mud pressure. Some borehole imaging logs such as FMI, FMS and UBI are appropriate tools for wellbore fracture detection. These fractures are distinguished in the logs as dark and symmetrical points (or lines) on both sides of the well and are used as an indicator for in situ stress studies. The size and shape of these fractures are strongly depend on the magnitude of the in situ stress. Therefore, many researchers suggested that by analyzing the geometric shape of the borehole breakout is an appropriate technique for estimation of in situ stress components...