Effect of River Levee with Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil against Overflow Erosion and Infiltration

Overflows from huge floods have caused levee breaches in a great number of places, including Japan. To prevent such destruction and thereby increase the resistance of armored levees to overflow erosion, in this study, we examined the performances of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil (GRS) levees against overflow erosion under various conditions, such as reinforcement, back slopes, and geo-grid layers. In addition, we investigated the effect of geo-grid layers on the infiltration of levees. The model tests revealed that 1) with scour protection in front of the toe of the back slope, the GRS levee exhibits much higher resistance against overflow erosion than the armored levee; 2) the armored levee with a steep back slope (= 1:0.5) collapsed faster than that with a normal slope (= 1:2). However, the GRS levee with a steep back slope of 1:0.5 maintained high resistance against overflow erosion after the target time. 3) The GRS levee with partial and full reinforcements had a comparably high resistance against overflow erosion. 4) The GRS levee using a small-sized geo-grid maintained a high residual ratio of the cross-sectional area over a long period. 5) The infiltration discharge of the GRS levee was lesser than that of the levee with no reinforcement due to the reduction in infiltration erosion in the GRS levee. These facts suggest that the GRS levee with partial reinforcement can be applied to the reinforcement of existing levees, and appropriately sized geo-grid layers should be selected

Lattice QCD calculation of the proton decay matrix element in the continuum limit

We present a quenched lattice QCD calculation of the \alpha and \beta parameters of the proton decay matrix element. The simulation is carried out using the Wilson quark action at three values of the lattice spacing in the range a\approx 0.1-0.064 fm to study the scaling violation effect. We find only mild scaling violation when the lattice scale is determined by the nucleon mass. We obtain in the continuum limit, |\alpha(NDR,2GeV)|=0.0090(09)(^{+5}_{-19})GeV^3 and |\beta(NDR,2GeV)|=0.0096(09)(^{+6}_{-20})GeV^3 with \alpha and \beta in a relatively opposite sign, where the first error is statistical and the second is due to the uncertainty in the determination of the physical scale.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Continuum limit of proton decay matrix elements in quenched lattice QCD

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the parameters \alpha and \beta which are necessary in the theoretical estimation of the proton lifetime in grand unified theories (GUTs) using chiral lagrangian approach. The simulation is carried out using the Wilson quark action at three gauge coupling constants in the quenched approximation. We obtain |\alpha(2GeV)|=0.0091(08)(^{+10}_{-19})GeV^3 and |\beta(2GeV)|=0.0098(08)(^{+10}_{-20})GeV^3 in the continuum limit where the first error is statistical and the second one is due to scale setting.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, talk presented at Lattice2003(matrix