Investigation of Lateral Stress Relief on theStability of PHI = 0 DEG Slopes Using Laboratory, Fracture Mechanics, and Finite Element Method Approaches

Total stress analyses of purely cohesive cut slopes utilize the undrained shear strength for slope stability analyses. These slopes can have an in-situ lateral earth pressure that is greater than the vertical pressure. Excavations into these materials results in expansion of the slope face due to release of confining pressure. When strains exceed that which can be internally absorbed through elastic deformation, failure planes or cracks may develop at the toe of the slope. However, conventional limit equilibrium methods of slope stability analysis do not account for the in-situ stress conditions or the development of shear zones or cracks that occur from lateral stress relief. Progressive failure of the slope may occur if internal lateral stresses are large enough to cause stress concentrations in front of the advancing toe cracks. Finite element methods using substitution methods reveal two distinct shear cracks at the toe of slope consisting of a horizontal and an inclined failure plane while a tension zone develops in the backslope region. The formation and extension of the shear cracks are strongly dependent on ko and they can extend to approximately 1/4 of the slope height due to initial lateral stress relief. Classical limit equilibrium solutions regarding the critical slope height have been revised to account for lateral stress relief. Analyses indicate good agreement with published case histories and they reveal how the shear zones propagate to create progressive slope failure in stiff clay slopes under total stress analyses

Unstable Slope Management Program

INE/AUTC 11.1

Comment on Esbensen, Bertsch and Snover Concerning Reconciling Coulomb Dissociation and Radiative Capture Measurements

The RIKEN data on the Coulomb Dissociation (CD) of 8B were shown to be in good agreement with the Direct Capture (DC) data on the 7Be(p,g)8B reaction (that were known at that time) of Filippone {\em et al.} Yet recently it was claimed that the RIKEN2 CD data must be corrected in order to be reconciled with the slope of DC data. Considering the (correct) so called scale independent b-slope parameter of the RIKEN2 CD data, the resultant corrected b-slope parameter suggested by Esbensen, Bertsch and Snover is shown to be considerably smaller than the so called average b-slope parameter of DC data. The suggested corrections of the b-slope parameter lead to a large disagreement with DC data, in sharp contrast to the claim. The slope corrections are only significant for the RIKEN2 CD data. For the GSI kinematics, where in fact one may observe slope different than for DC (at least for the GSI1 data), they find a fortuitous cancellation that leads to a vanishingly small slope correction. Hence the validity of these correction based on the observed slopes can not be substantiated.Comment: Work Supported by USDOE Grant No. DE-FG02-94ER40870. Updated as published in the Phys. Rev. Lett. on April 21, 200

Measurement of surface roughness slope

Instrument, consisting of isolator, differentiator, absolute value circuit, and integrator, uses output signal from surface texture analyzer profile-amplifier to calculate surface roughness slope. Calculations provide accurate, instantaneous value of the slope. Instrument is inexpensive and applicable to any commerical surface texture analyzer

The Giant Branches of Open and Globular Clusters in the Infrared as Metallicity Indicators: A Comparison with Theory

We apply the giant branch slope-[Fe/H] relation derived by Kuchinski et al. [AJ, 109, 1131 (1995)] to a sample of open clusters. We find that the slope of the giant branch in K vs. (J-K) color-magnitude diagrams correlates with [Fe/H] for open clusters as it does for metal-rich globular clusters but that the open cluster data are systematically shifted to less negative values of giant branch slope, at constant [Fe/H]. We use isochrone models to examine the theoretical basis for this relationship and find that for a given value of [Fe/H], the slope of the relationship remains constant with decreasing population age but the relation shifts to less negative values of giant branch slope with decreasing age. Both of these theoretical predictions agree with the trends found in the data. Finally, we derive new coefficients for the giant branch slope-[Fe/H] relation for specific members of 3 populations, metal-rich globular clusters, bulge stars and open clusters.Comment: 16 pages including 3 figures (AASTEX), AJ Accepted, also available at http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~martini/pubs.htm

Simple quasi-exponential slope generator

Circuitry for digitally generating an exponentially decaying wave function permits discrete values to be sampled from the exponential waveform for comparison with a binary number of specified accuracy. This exponential-decay generator employs a simple binary counter to count in the sequence of exponential decay

The Perceptual Experience Of Slope By Foot And By Finger

Historically, the bodily senses have often been regarded as impeccable sources of spatial information and as being the teacher of vision. Here, the authors report that the haptic perception of slope by means of the foot is greatly exaggerated. The exaggeration is present in verbal as well as proprioceptive judgments. It is shown that this misperception of pedal slope is not caused by calibration to the well-established visual misperception of slope because it is present in congenitally blind individuals as well. The pedal misperception of slope is contrasted with the perception of slope by dynamic touch with a finger in a force-feedback device. Although slopes feel slightly exaggerated even when explored by finger, they tend to show much less exaggeration than when equivalent slopes are stood on. The results are discussed in terms of a theory of coding efficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)(journal abstract