Large roots dominate the contribution of trees to slope stability     

Filippo Giadrossich  Denis Cohen  Massimiliano Schwarz  Antonio Ganga  Roberto Marrosu  Mario Pirastru  Gian Franco Capra 《地球表面变化过程与地形》2019,44(8):1602-1609

Tree roots provide surface erosion protection and improve slope stability through highly complex interactions with the soil due to the nature of root systems. Root reinforcement estimation is usually performed by in situ pullout tests, in which roots are pulled out of the soil to reliably estimate the root strength of compact soils. However, this test is not suitable for the scenario where a soil progressively fails in a series of slump blocks – for example, in unsupported soils near streambanks and road cuts where the soil has no compressive resistance at the base of the hillslope. The scenario where a soil is unsupported on its downslope extent and progressively deforms at a slow strain rate has received little attention, and we are unaware of any study on root reinforcement that estimates the additional strength provided by roots in this situation. We therefore designed two complementary laboratory experiments to compare the force required to pull the root out. The results indicate that the force required to pull out roots is reduced by up to 50% when the soil fails as slump blocks compared to pullout tests. We also found that, for slump block failure, roots had a higher tendency to slip than to break, showing the importance of active earth pressure on root reinforcement behaviour, which contributes to reduced friction between soil and roots. These results were then scaled up to a full tree and tree stand using the root bundle and field-measured spatial distributions of root density. Although effects on the force mobilized in small roots can be relevant, small roots have virtually no effect on root reinforcement at the tree or stand scale on hillslopes. When root distribution has a wide range of diameters, the root reinforcement results are controlled by large roots, which hold much more force than small roots. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

A first order evaluation of the capacity of a healthcare network under emergency     

Cimellaro  Gian Paolo  Marasco  Sebastiano  Noori  Ali Zamani  Mahin  Stephen A. 《地震工程与工程振动(英文版)》2019,18(3):663-677

Immediately after an earthquake a healthcare system within a city, comprising several hospitals, endures an extraordinary demand. This paper proposes a new methodology to estimate whether the hospital network has enough capacity to withstand the emergency caused by an earthquake. The ability of healthcare facilities and to provide a broad spectrum of emergency services immediately after a seismic event is assessed through a metamodel that assumes waiting time as main response parameter to assess the hospital network performance. The First Aid network of San Francisco subjected to a 7.2 Mw magnitude earthquake has been used as case study. The total number of injuries and their distributions among the six major San Francisco's Emergency Departments have been assessed and compared with their capacity that has been determined using a survey conducted by the medical staff of the hospitals. The numerical results have shown that three of the six considered San Francisco's hospitals cannot provide emergency services to the estimated injured. Two alternatives have been proposed to improve the performance of the network. The first one redistributes existing resources while the second one considers additional resources by designing a new Emergency Department.  相似文献   

An ANN algorithm for automatic, real-time tsunami detection in deep-sea level measurements     

Gian Mario Beltrami   《Ocean Engineering》2008,35(5-6):572-587

The present paper looks at algorithms to be implemented in the software of bottom pressure recorders (BPRs) for the automatic, real-time detection of a tsunami within recorded signals. The structure of an algorithm based on the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) is presented and compared to the one developed under the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) program run by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The performance and efficiency of the two algorithms are compared using both synthetic and actually measured time series. Results show that an improvement in detection performance can be obtained by using the ANN algorithm.  相似文献   

Improvement of Disc Cutter Performance by Water Jet Assistance     

Raimondo Ciccu  Battista Grosso 《Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering》2014,47(2):733-744

This article deals with the problem of assisting disc cutters by means of high-velocity jets of water, with the aim of increasing the excavation rate while improving the working conditions, with particular reference to wear. The results of an experimental research undertaken at the Waterjet Laboratory of the University of Cagliari on a medium–hard abrasive rock clearly show that a higher removal rate is achieved owing to the weakening action of a jet directed on one side of the disc, causing deeper penetration. This outcome is interpreted on the basis of the scale formation model, which explains why smaller scales are obtained on the water jet’s side of the groove. Accordingly, it is suggested that the results can be further improved if the jet is directed ahead of the tool along the same path, since, in this way, larger scales can be produced on both sides.  相似文献   

On Joint Roughness: Measurements and Use in Rock Mass Characterization     

Gian Luca Morelli 《Geotechnical and Geological Engineering》2014,32(2):345-362

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Mapping soil erodibility from composed data set in Sele River Basin, Italy     

Nazzareno Diodato  Massimo Fagnano  Ines Alberico  Giovanni Battista Chirico 《Natural Hazards》2011,58(1):445-457

Evaluation of soil erodibility is an important task for Mediterranean lands, in which fertility and crop yield are significantly affected by soil erosion. The soil physicochemical parameters affecting soil erodibility are highly variable in space and, as for many other environmental variables, sample measurements are generally not enough for assessing its spatial variability with an acceptable level of uncertainty at the scales of practical interest. This study illustrates the procedure applied for estimating the pattern of soil erodibility across the Sele Basin (Southern Italy), where soil properties have been measured on a limited number of sparse samples. Sampled data were integrated with other sparse data estimated by local regression functions, which relate soil erodibility to auxiliary variables, such as terrain attributes and land system class memberships. Sampled and estimated data were merged in a composed data set to assess the spatial pattern of soil erodibility by ordinary kriging. The proposed approach offers effective spatial predictions, and it is exportable to regions where financial costs for soil sampling are not feasible.  相似文献   

Split Comet C/2001 A2 (LINEAR)     

Jehin  Emmanuel  Boehnhardt  Hermann  Sekanina  Zdenek  Bonfils  Xavier  Schütz  Oliver  Beuzit  Jean-Luc  Billeres  Malvina  Garradd  Gordon J.  Leisy  Pierre  Marchis  Franck  Más  Antonio  Origlia  Livia  Scarpa  Daniel  Thomas  Daniel  Tozzi  Gian Paolo 《Earth, Moon, and Planets》2002,90(1-4):147-151

Comet C/2001 A2 experienced several splitting events duringits 2001 perihelion passage. The first break-upevent was observed in March 2001 (IAUC 7616).In this paper we report the first results of ourextensive imaging and spectroscopic monitoring campaignwith ESO telescopes over several weeks before andafter the perihelion passage on May 25 2001.  相似文献   

Chemical abundances in QSO host galaxies and environments from narrow absorption line systems     

Valentina D'Odorico  Stefano Cristiani  Donatella Romano  Gian Luigi Granato  Luigi Danese 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2004,351(3):976-988

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Digitization and Scientific Exploitation of the Italian and Vatican Astronomical Plate Archives     

Cesare Barbieri  Carlo Blanco  Beatrice Bucciarelli  Regina Coluzzi  Andrea Di Paola  Luciano Lanteri  Gian Luca Li Causi  Ettore Marilli  Piero Massimino  Vincenzo Mezzalira  Stefano Mottola  Roberto Nesci  Alessandro Omizzolo  Fernando Pedichini  Francesca Rampazzi  Corinne Rossi  Ruggero Stagni  Milcho Tsvetkov  Roberto Viotti 《Experimental Astronomy》2003,15(1):29-43

There is a widespread interest to digitize the precious information contained in the astronomical plate archives, both for the preservation of their content and for its fast distribution to all interested researchers in order to achieve their better scientific exploitation. This paper presents the first results of our large-scale project to digitize the archive of plates of the Italian Astronomical Observatories and of the Specola Vaticana. Similar systems, composed by commercial flat-bed retro-illuminated scanners plus dedicated personal computers and acquisition and analysis software, have been installed in all participating Institutes. Ad-hoc codes have been developed to acquire the data, to test the suitability of the machines to our scientific needs, and to reduce the digital data in order to extract the astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic content. Two more elements complete the overall project: the provision of high quality BVRI CCD sequences in selected fields with the Campo Imperatore telescopes, and the distribution of the digitized information to all interested researchers via the Web. The methods we have derived in the course of this project have been already applied successfully to plates taken by other Observatories, for instance at Byurakan and at Hamburg.  相似文献   

Correlation in spectral accelerations for earthquakes in Europe   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Gian Paolo Cimellaro 《地震工程与结构动力学》2013,42(4):623-633

The shape of a uniform hazard spectrum has been criticized to be unrealistic for a site where the spectral ordinates of the uniform hazard spectrum at different periods are governed by different scenario events and conservative for long‐return‐period earthquake shaking. The conditional mean spectrum considering epsilon (CMS‐ε) takes into account the correlation of spectral demands (represented by values of ε) at different periods, to address these issues. This paper proposes new prediction models for the correlation coefficient of ε(T₁) and ε(T₂), a key component for developing a CMS, using Pan‐European earthquake records from a European ground motion database. Epsilon (ε) for each record is computed using the 2005 Ambraseys ground‐motion prediction equation. The model can be used to develop CMS for European sites, and it can be incorporated in the European seismic standards. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献