SUMMARYA solution is presented for the radial consolidation around stone columns under constant surcharge load. The solution considers the influence of vertical and radial deformation of the column, either in elastic and elastoplastic regimes.The solution is in terms of the average excess pore pressure in the soil. It is based on previous solutions, initially developed for rigid column, or including only vertical deformation. For elastic column, the solution gives the variation of strains and stresses between the undrained and final states, for which it coincides with the existing elastic solutions.All the results are given in closed form, and both the elastic and plastic deformations of the column lead to an equivalent coefficient of consolidation for the radial flow, which enables the application of the existing methods of integration of the consolidation equation.A parametric study is presented, showing the influence of the main problem features. A design example is used to illustrate the application to practical cases.

The paper analyses the fracture behaviour of several rocks, namely a sandstone, a limestone and two marbles, one of them being a Carrara marble. The experimental program comprises in total 216 fracture specimens, tested in 4-point bending conditions and including specimens with notch radii varying from 0.15 mm up to 15 mm. The notch effect is analysed through the evolution of the apparent fracture toughness and the application of the Theory of Critical Distances.The present study aims to generalize a previous study on a granite and a limestone to a broader range of rocks. The point and line methods of the Theory of the Critical Distances successfully explain the notch effect on the fracture specimens. The value of the critical distance of these rocks is of the order of mm. Finally, the results show a correlation between the microstructural features of the rocks, specifically the grain size, and their critical distances.

Please cite this article as: Cicero, S., García, T., Castro, J., Madrazo, V., Andrés, D., Analysis of notch effect on the fracture behaviour of granite and limestone: An ABSTRACT This paper presents the analysis of the notch effect on granite and limestone fracture specimens.The research is based on the results obtained in an experimental programme composed of 84 fracture specimens, combining the two materials and 7 different notch radii varying from 0.15 mm up to 10 mm. The notch effect is analysed through the evolution of the apparent fracture toughness and the application of the Theory of the Critical Distances.The results reveal a significant notch effect in the limestone, whereas the notch effect in the granite is negligible for the range of notch radii analysed. Both observations are justified by the corresponding critical distance of the material. ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT3 reduction in the resistant section). Additionally, the terms "sharp" and "blunt" are not absolute, but rather they depend on the material: there are materials that present a clear notch effect (e.g., increase in load-bearing capacity and apparent fracture toughness) for very small notch radii (e.g, Madrazo et al., 2012), and there are others that require a certain notch radius to develop a notch effect (e.g., Cicero et al., 2012). This particular nature of notches has led to a great deal of research work over the last few decades, aiming to provide specific tools for the assessment of notched components, beyond the simple and generally overconservative application of ordinary fracture mechanics. However, the analysis of these phenomena in rocks has been scarce, as detailed in the following section.Moreover, size effects are an important issue in rock fracture mechanics, given that the material behaviour (e.g., fracture toughness, tensile strength) and the notch sensitivity may change with the size of the component being analysed (

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This paper presents a novel, exact, semi-analytical solution for the quasi-static undrained expansion of a cylindrical cavity in soft soils with fabric anisotropy. This is the first theoretical solution of the undrained expansion of a cylindrical cavity under plane strain conditions for soft soils with anisotropic behaviour of plastic nature. The solution is rigorously developed in detail, introducing a new stress invariant to deal with the soil fabric. The semi-analytical solution requires numerical evaluation of a system of six first-order ordinary differential equations. The results agree with finite element analyses and show the influence of anisotropic plastic behaviour. The effective stresses at critical state are constant and they may be analytically related to the undrained shear strength. The initial vertical cross anisotropy caused by soil deposition changes towards a radial cross anisotropy after cavity expansion. The analysis of the stress paths shows that proper modelling of anisotropic plastic behaviour involves modelling not only the initial fabric anisotropy but also its evolution with plastic straining.