Developing and Applying Smartphone Apps in Online Courses

Online courses provide students flexible access to class at anytime and anywhere. Most online courses currently rely on computer-based delivery. However, computers still burden instructors and students with limited mobility and flexibility. To provide more convenient access to online courses, smartphones have been increasingly adopted as a mobile method to access online courses. In this paper, we share our practical experience in designing and developing a smartphone platform for accessing online courses. The main contributions of this paper include: 1) we present the main technical issues of applying smartphones to online courses; 2) we discuss several key factors of designing, developing and delivering online courses that support smartphone access

A DEM investigation on simple shear behavior of dense granular assemblies

A micromechanical investigation on simple shear behavior of dense granular assemblies was carried out by discrete element method. Three series of numerical tests were performed to examine the effects of initial porosity, vertical stress and particle shape on simple shear behavior of the samples, respectively. It was found that during simple shear the directions of principal stress and principal strain increment rotate differently with shear strain level. The non-coaxiality between the two directions decreases with strain level and may greatly affect the shear behavior of the assemblies, especially their peak friction angles. The numerical modelling also reveals that the rotation of the principal direction of fabric anisotropy lags behind that of the major principal stress direction during simple shear, which is described as fabric hyteresis effect. The degrees of fabric and interparticle contact force anisotropies increase as particle angularity increases, whereas the orientations of these anisotropies have not been significantly influenced by particle shape. An extended stress-dilatancy relationship based on ROWE-DAVIS framework was proposed to consider the non-coaxiality effect under principal stress rotation. The model was validated by present numerical results as well as some published physical test and numerical modelled data. © 2015, Central South University Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Analysis of Fluid–Structure Coupling Vibration Mechanism for Subsea Tree Pipeline Combined with Fluent and Ansys Workbench

In the process of oil exploitation, subseatrees sometimes vibrate. In this paper, fluid–structure coupling software was used to study the causes of subsea tree vibration. First, the complex subsea tree model was simplified, and ageometric grid model was established for software calculation. Then, under the given two working conditions, the software Fluent was used to analyze the pressure and velocity distribution of the subsea tree pipeline’s flow field. It was found that the pressure of the flow field changed greatly at the variable diameter and right-angles. Using Ansys Workbench software, flow-structure coupling calculations and modal analysis of the subsea tree were carried out. The results showed that the vibration of the long straight pipeline section was severe. Finally, the paper puts forward the measures to reduce the vibration of subsea tree pipelines and provides construction advice for the safe production of subsea trees

DEM modeling of particle breakage in silica sands under one-dimensional compression

A Discrete Element Method (DEM) model is developed to study the particle breakage effect on the one-dimensional compression behavior of silica sands. The 'maximum tensile stress' breakage criterion considering multiple contacts is adopted to simulate the crushing of circular particles in the DEM. The model is compared with published experimental results. Comparison between the compression curves obtained from the numerical and experimental results shows that the proposed method is very effective in studying the compression behavior of silica sands considering particle breakage. The evolution of compression curves at different stress levels is extensively studied using contact force distribution, variation of contact number and particle size distribution curve with loading. It is found that particle breakage has great impact on compression behavior of sand, particularly after the yield stress is reached and particle breakage starts. The crushing probability of particles is found to be macroscopically affected by stress level and particle size distribution curve, and microscopically related to the evolutions of contact force and coordination number. Once the soil becomes well-graded and the average coordination number is greater than 4 in two-dimension, the crushing probability of parent particles can reduce by up to 5/6. It is found that the average contact force does not always increase with loading, but increases to a peak value then decreases once the soil becomes more well-graded. It is found through the loading rate sensitivity analysis that the compression behavior of sand samples in the DEM is also affected by the loading rate. Higher yield stresses are obtained at higher loading rates. © 2016 The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics

A micro-mechanical simulation of sand liquefaction behavior by DEM

A two-dimensional Particle Flow Code (PFC2D) was applied to simulate sand liquefaction behavior induced by cyclic loading. The numerical sample was prepared with 4061 discs with its particle size distribution similar to Fujian Standard sand. Based on the theory of strain-controlled undrained cyclic triaxial test, a constant volume numerical test was carried out under cyclic loading with uniform strain amplitude. The macroscopic responses of the sample were obtained and the variation of average coordination number under cyclic loading was analyzed. The effects of cyclic strain amplitude and confining pressure on liquefaction resistance were further analyzed in numerical simulations. It was found that the numerical tests reproduced the general characteristics of liquefaction behavior of saturated sand under cyclic loading. The effects of cyclic strain amplitude and confining pressure on the liquefaction resistance of the numerical sample were comparable with reported experimental results

Three-dimensional DEM simulation of cone penetration test by using circumferential periodic boundary

In order to explore the micro-mechanism of CPT, a new circumferential periodic boundary was developed to consider the three-dimensional axisymmetric problem with 1/4 of the cylinder. To validate the method, a drained triaxial test was modeled with the proposed method and the traditional full model. The results are comparable and the proposed method is very effective. The method was further used to simulate a cone penetration test in dry Fontainebleau sand. It was found that, the variation of cone radial stress and tip resistance during penetration from the model are in good agreement with the reported test results. The micromechanical responses, such as the distributions of particle displacement, internal stress and local porosity to cone penetration are extensively studied. The evolutions of fabric anisotropy during penetration are also discussed. The relationship between stress and fabric is quantitatively described using fabric tensor, which reveals the mechanism of cone penetration capacity microscopically. The results of the work not only improve the efficiency of three-dimensional discrete element method(DEM) simulation, but also promote better understanding of CPT mechanism. © 2016, Science Press. All right reserved

Mitigation Effect of Perforation Drilling on the Sliding Risk during Spudcan Installation Close to Footprints

Perforation drilling is a promising technique to mitigate the sliding risk of jack-up units installed around footprints. Based on the coupled Eulerian–Lagrangian (CEL) method, a 1/2 finite element model, including a rigid Lagrangian spudcan and a Eulerian soil part, was established, and the contact interface was modelled with the Coulomb friction model. Validated against an indoor perforation test, the model was adopted to investigate the mitigation mechanism and effects of the borehole diameter, number, depth, and the drilling range. The simulations reveal that the mitigation efficiency increases with the borehole diameter, number, and depth. However, it shows little improvement if the borehole depth increases beyond double footprint depth. The semi-drilling at the outer side of the footprint is a little more effective than the full-drilling at both the inner and outer sides of the footprint. The present work emphasizes the effects of perforation drilling parameters on the mitigation efficiency, which are of great significance to guide the engineering practice and guarantee the safe operation of the jack-up reinstallation close to existing footprints

Effects of particle breakage on the mechanical characteristics of geogrid-reinforced granular soils under triaxial shear : A DEM investigation

A series of numerically triaxial shear tests on crushable and uncrushable granular soils reinforced by geogrid were conducted using 3-Dimension Particle Flow Code. The macroscopic behaviors of crushable and uncrushable granular soil during shearing were compared. Also, the underlying macro–micro linkages were explored. The main findings are as follows: Particle breakage decreases the contact forces between soil particles to reduce the shear strength of granular soils; The reinforcement effect of geogrids on the shear strength of granular soils can be attributed to the increase in fabric and force anisotropies; The particle displacement distribution of crushable soil samples is more uniform than that of uncrushable samples, and the shear band of crushable samples is not obvious; The reinforcement effect of geogrid with the aperture size ratio of 4.4 is the highest among the samples because the number of crushed particles and the deformation of geogrids reaches a balance

Hybrid ensemble artificial intelligence algorithms for predicting peak shear strength of clayey soil-geomembrane interfaces and experimental validation

The peak shear strength of clayey soil-geomembrane interfaces is a vital parameter for the design of relevant engineering infrastructure. However, due to the large number of influence factors and the complex action mechanism, accurate prediction of the peak shear strength for clayey soil-geomembrane interfaces is always a challenge. In this paper, a novel machine learning model was established by combining Mind Evolutionary Algorithm (MEA) and the ensemble algorithm of Adaptive Boosting Algorithm (ADA)-Back Propagation Artificial Neural Network (BPANN) to predict the peak shear strength of clayey soil-geomembrane interfaces based on the results of 623 laboratory interface direct shear experiments. By comparing with the conventional machine learning algorithms, including Particle Swarm Optimisation Algorithm (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) tuned ADA-BPANN, MEA tuned Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest (RF), the superior performance of MEA tuned ADA-BPANN has been validated, with higher predicting precision, shorter training time, and the avoidance of local optimum and overfitting. By adopting the proposed novel model, sensitivity analysis was carried out, which indicates that normal pressure has the largest influence on the peak shear strength, followed by geomembrane roughness. Furthermore, an analytical equation was proposed to assess the peak shear strength that allows the usage of machine learning skills for the practitioners with limited machine learning knowledge. The present research highlights the potential of the MEA tuned ADA-BPANN model as a useful tool to assist in preciously estimating the peak shear strength of clayey soil-geomembrane interfaces, which can provide benefits for the design of relevant engineering applications