Search

In recent years, earthquakes have caused several types of damage to residential embankments. To assess the integrity of residential embankments and ascertain necessary countermeasures following ground disasters, it is crucial to accurately define the boundary of cutting and filling. Although surface wave methods nondestructively unveil the S-wave velocity VS across a broad spectrum, there are currently no methods available to predict the boundary of cutting and filling based on VS. In this investigation, surface wave measurements were conducted in an area thought to be an embankment, according to aerial topographic interpretation. The acquired VS data were used to ascertain the soil characteristics of the unaffected residential embankment. Furthermore, the applicability of a method for predicting the boundary of cutting and fillings was examined. When the mode value of VS within the embankment was selected as the threshold for the boundary of cutting and filling, some agreement was confirmed with the outcomes calculated through aerial topographic interpretation. In addition, a straightforward technique for calculating ground subsidence based on VS was considered. It was found that it may be feasible to determine the estimated seismic settlement of residential levees swiftly and nondestructively throughout a sizable region. These results indicate that the use of the surface wave method has the potential to advance residential embankment health assessment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforced soil walls, which are civil engineering structures, are subjected to catastrophic collapse when concrete panels fall off in cold and snowy environments. One of the methods to predict such collapse is soil temperature monitoring of the reinforced soil wall. However, in cold and snowy environments, health monitoring requires a lot of effort because the snow load breaks the wires connecting the data logger to the sensors, whereby the collected data fail to reach the logger. In this study, we developed a prototype wireless and battery-free soil temperature measurement system using wireless power transfer (WPT), and conducted field observation experiments for about nine months on a full-scale test reinforced soil wall and an in-service highway. The seasonal variation of the temperature data obtained from the WPT method was consistent with that of the temperature data obtained continuously by the traditional method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]