The construction and demolition of infrastructure can produce a surplus of excavated soils that ends up at landfills. This practice is not sustainable, and approaches are needed to reduce soil waste and minimize environmental and human health hazards. The “Reuse of urban soils and sites” Working Group in the European Large Geotechnical Institute Platform (ELGIP) works towards a safe and resource efficient use of excavated soils for construction. By considering relevant literature and practicals based on experience in the participating ELGIP countries (France, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden), this study presents current practice related to the reuse of excavated soils, and the main barriers (regulatory, organizational, logistical and material quality) to effectively reuse them. Results show that there is no consensus on the best strategies to manage excavated soils in urban areas. This paper provides suggestions of ways in which stakeholders can increase reuse of excavated soils.
Site investigation has to be effective and must be carried out in a systematic way. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the number of investigation points, field tests, and laboratory tests for a description of a building site. Such an assessment depends on many parameters based on experiences which cannot be physically evaluated. The guidance on spacing is available from many sources, and such guidance provides a starting point for the extent of investigation. The recommendations were examined and used for building of the model to predict the optimal number of investigation points. Several parameters with the biggest influence on the number of investigation points were considered. The influence of each parameter was determined on the basis of recommendations and engineering judgment. Increments of the minimum number of investigation points for a different building site conditions were used to construct the model with adaptive network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The formed ANFIS-SI model was applied on reference cases. There is a good agreement between the model and the reference cases. Additionally, the recommendations for the type and frequency of tests in each stratum are provided to optimize the soil investigation. The ANFIS-SI model, with integrated recommendations, can be used as a systematic decision support tool for engineers to evaluate the number of investigation points for a description of the building site.
This paper presents the cost optimization of an underground gas storage (UGS), designed from lined rock caverns (LRCs). The optimization is performed by the non-linear programming (NLP) approach. For this purpose, the NLP optimization model OPTUGS was developed. The model comprises the cost objective function, which is subjected to geomechanical and design constraints. It is proposed that the geotechnical problem will be solved simultaneously. In such a way, the optimization enables not only that the solution is optimal, but also that the rock mass achieves enough strength, stability and safety. It is proposed that the optimization will be performed for the phase of the conceptual design. The numerical example at the end of the paper demonstrates the efficiency of the introduced optimization approach.
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