The characteristics of glacial tills from Northern England derived from a relational database

Abstract

Geotechnical investigations have been carried out for many years in order to identify the depth, extent and the properties of the glacial deposits of Northern England. This valuable source of data exists in various forms because of the differences in the design of the investigations, the codes of practice relevant at the time of investigations, and contractors practice. An electronic store of these data would be a valuable asset not only to future development but to help in scientific studies of glacial till. This paper presents an overview of NETDATA (Northern England Till DATA), a relational database which is designed to store that data in a consistent format, allowing flexibility for further use. A preliminary analysis of the data has resulted in a characteristic data set for the tills.

Three-dimensional reconstruction of realistic stone-based materials with controllable stone inclusion geometries

“…Then, fine spheres of mean diameter, 𝑑 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒 = 𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑒 /4, are generated to fill the void space, which simulates the soil matrix. Based on the previous studies [39], the modeling parameters of stonebased material used in the DEM simulations are summarized as: (a) the particle density is 2600kg/m 3 ; (b) friction between rigid particles during shearing process is 0.5; (c) friction between wall and rigid particles is 0.0; (d) contact modulus between wall and rigid particles is 1×10 9 ; (e) contact modulus between rigid particles is 1×10 8 ; (f) the ratio between normal and shear stiffness is 4/3; (g) damping ratio is 0.7.…”

“…They are either widely distributed in the nature or massively produced in the industry and usually described as a multi-phase material that mainly consist of coarse stones and fine matrix [1][2][3]. Typical stone-based materials include gravel deposits [7], cement/asphalt concrete [5][6], rock-soil mixtures [7], sandy cobbles [8][9], fouled ballast [10][11][12], etc. Due to the variation of the internal structure and components properties, the physical and mechanical characteristics of stone-based materials are quite distinctive from the homogeneous construction materials.…”