Publications

Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Written by an international group of experts, Ground Improvement Case Histories: Chemical, Electrokinetic, Thermal and Bioengineering Methods provides over 700 pages of case-histories collected from all over the world. Each case-history provides an overview of the specific technology followed by applications, and in some cases, comprehensive back analysis through numerical modelling is discussed. The book includes methods for employing bacterial and biological treatment, and native vegetation for stabilizing problematic soils. Specific case-histories included in the book are: Effect of Drainage and Grouting for the World Longest Seikan Undersea Tunnel Construction, Cement/lime Mixing Ground Improvement for Road Construction on Soft Ground, Use of Jet Grouting in Deep Excavations, and Stabilization of Reactive Sulphide Mine Tailings using Water Cover Technology. • Provides recent case histories using chemical and bio-engineering methods by world-renowned engineering experts • Includes over 200 illustrations and 150 equations from relevant topics, including state-of-the-art chemical and bioengineering methods • Presents comprehensive analysis methods using numerical modelling methods • Case histories include the "Effect of Drainage and Grouting on the Worlds Longest Seikan Undersea Tunnel Construction" and "Cement/Lime Mixing Ground Improvement for Road Construction on Soft Ground".

Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Written by a group of international contributors, Ground Improvement Case Histories: Embankments with Special Reference to Soil Consolidation and Other Physical Methods, employs the use of case-histories to illustrate and apply equations, numerical methods and technology to undertake even the most complicated ground improvement projects. In this book, each case-history provides an overview of the specific technology followed by field applications and in some cases comprehensive back-analysis through numerical modelling. Specific embankment case-histories with special reference to soil consolidation included are: Ballina Bypass (Australia), Tianjin Port (China), Second Bangkok International Airport (Thailand), Changi East reclamation (Singapore), Maizuru-Wakasa Expressway (Japan) and Colombo Airport Expressway, Sri Lanka. Other physical methods include performance of stone columns at Penny's Bay reclamation in Hong Kong and PCC piles for highway and high-speed railway construction in China, among others. • Provides a wealth of contributor-generated case histories from all over the world • Includes an abundance of illustrations and worked out examples • All inclusive discussion of preloading, vertical drains and vacuums applications • Features case-histories regarding sand and gravel piles, stone columns and other Rigid Inclusions.

Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Written by an international group of contributors, Ground Improvement Case Histories: Compaction, Grouting and Geosynthetics provides over 700 pages of international case-histories. Each case-history provides an overview of the specific technology followed by applications, with some cases offering a comprehensive back-analysis through numerical modelling. Specific case-histories include: The Use of Alternative and Improved Construction Materials and Geosynthetics in Pavements, Case Histories of Embankments on Soft Soils and Stabilisation with Geosynthetics, Ground Improvement with Geotextile Reinforcements, Use of Geosynthetics to aid Construction over Soft Soils and Soil Improvement and Foundation Systems with Encased Columns and Reinforced Bearing Layers.

Basack, S, Indraratna, B, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Siahaan, F 2015, 'Theoretical and Numerical Perspectives on Performance of Stone-Column-Improved Soft Ground with Reference to Transport Infrastructure' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. 751-795.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. In this chapter, an axisymmetric solution is presented to study the performance of soft ground reinforced with stone columns with special emphasis on transport infrastructure. For typical surcharge (embankment) loading, significant column-to-soil stiffness ratio and the flexible nature of the embankment initiate the fill weight to "arch over" the stone columns, imposing uneven load distribution on the surface. In addition to the arching effect, the numerical model captured the influence of smear and clogging on the consolidation characteristics of soft clay. To simulate the field condition relevant to transport corridors, a free strain hypothesis was adopted. The entire numerical analysis was performed by means of finite difference technique with composite central and forward difference methods applied on axisymmetric soft soil elements under K0-condition. The model was validated by comparing with existing solutions and available field test results. Using the solutions developed, a design recommendation with relevant curves was proposed. The model and the design curves are successfully applied to selected case studies with several important conclusions.

Das, A, Kunwar, R, Pal, U, Ferrer, MA & Blumenstein, M 2015, 'An Online Learning-Based Adaptive Biometric System' in Adaptive Biometric Systems, Springer International Publishing, pp. 73-96.
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Fatahi, B, Khabbaz, H & Fatahi, B 2015, 'Improving Geotechnical Properties of Closed Landfills for Redevelopment Using Chemical Stabilization Techniques' in Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C (eds), Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 239-266.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Construction on closed landfill sites is generally a challenging task due to the complex behavior of creep, settlement, high amount of moisture content, and weak shear strength of waste materials. This chapter presents the experimental results and numerical analyses for the use of fly ash and quicklime in improvement of the geotechnical properties of municipal solid wastes (MSW). The waste materials were collected from a closed landfill in the southwest of Sydney. The samples were prepared by integrating MSW with a mixture of fly ash-quicklime with a ratio of 3:1 in percentages of 5, 10, 15, and 20 of fly ash by dry weight of the MSW. A series of experimental tests and numerical analysis were conducted on treated and untreated MSW samples. It was found that the chemical stabilization effectively increased the compressive strength, the shear strength parameters, the stiffness, and the brittleness index, whereas it decreased the settlement and the permeability of the MSW layer. The finite element program, PLAXIS version 9, was used to evaluate the settlement of a landfill model. The laboratory results were used to validate the numerical model. The settlement of the landfill model 10 and 20 years after the surcharge load was applied for different fly ash-quicklime contents and various depths of improvement was estimated. Results indicated that treatment of MSW significantly reduced the vertical displacement of the landfill model under surcharge load. This reduction was greater with higher depths of improvement.

Fatahi, B, Pathirage, U, Indraratna, B, Pallewattha, M & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'The Role of Native Vegetation in Stabilizing Formation Soil for Transport Corridors' in Indraratna, B, Chu, J & RUJIKIATKAMJORN, C (eds), Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 591-628.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This chapter describes a detailed field investigation conducted near an Australian native tree, Eucalyptus largiflorens. This investigation included field procedures such as drilling boreholes and taking soil samples, measuring the soil moisture content, soil suction, and also excavating trenches to observe the distribution of tree roots under the ground. It also includes the development a root water uptake model to examine and explain the soil properties, specifications for vegetation, and meteorological conditions; this root water uptake model incorporates key factors such as soil suction, active root density distribution, and potential transpiration. A two-dimensional finite element approach based on ABAQUS software was used to solve the transient coupled flow and deformation equations. The root water uptake model was implemented into the coupled analysis by introducing a sink term as a subroutine in the finite element analysis. The finite element mesh can be constructed using partially/fully saturated soil elements to represent the salient aspects of unsaturated permeability and the soil water characteristic curve. The model was formulated on the general effective stress theory of unsaturated soils, and based on this proposed model, the matric suction profile adjacent to the tree was analyzed numerically. To verify the model, the soil moisture content and suction profiles measured on site were compared to the predicted values, and profiles of ground settlement and lateral movement adjacent to the tree are presented and interpreted. By considering the various properties of the soil, types of vegetation, and atmospheric conditions, the proposed model would be of most use in predicting how this formation would react in a rail environment because the model developed in this study may improve the design and construction procedures for railway lines, foundations, and embankments near native vegetation. However, be...

Heitor, A, Indraratna, B, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Golaszewski, R 2015, 'Assessment of the Postcompaction Fill Characteristics at the Penrith Lakes Development Site' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. 399-428.
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Indraratna, B 2015, 'Recent Advances in Soft Soil Consolidation' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. 3-32.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Many metropolitan cities are situated along coastal belts, which are composed of very soft alluvial and marine clays. Because of low shear strength and high compressibility, the soft soils in these areas are not suitable for construction without appropriate ground improvement. To ensure stability during construction and reduce long-term settlements, it is necessary to implement a preconstruction technique in the soft soil site on which infrastructures are to be built. A common technique is to use prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs), which, combined with surcharge loading and vacuum, occurs before the construction of many essential coastal line infrastructures such as airports, railway tracks, and commercial buildings worldwide. This technique has been proved to be an effective way to expedite soft soil consolidation. Firstly, the radial drainage paths allowed by PVDs accelerate the dissipation of excess pore pressure under the surcharge loading. Secondly, negative pore pressure created by the vacuum accelerates the consolidation process as well as controlling lateral displacement. This chapter introduces the basic principles of PVDs combined with surcharge loading and vacuum, along with the illustration of two types of PVD systems: the membrane system and the membraneless system. The numerical conversion method from 3D to 2D and a constitutive model for soft soils under cyclic loading is presented, along with case histories of the Port of Brisbane, the Pacific Highway in Ballina, the Sandgate Rail Grade Separation Project in Australia, and the Tianjin Port in China. PVDs with vacuum-assisted preloading was utilized in each of these projects and has made significant contributions to preconstruction consolidation. Design charts are introduced for design of PVDs combined with surcharge loading and vacuum in industry.

Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Preface', pp. xvii-xviii.

Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Preface' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. xvii-xviii.
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Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Preface' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. xvii-xviii.
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Indraratna, B, Chu, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Preface' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. xvii-xviii.
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Indraratna, B, Rujikiatkamjorn, C, Balasubramaniam, AS & Wijeyakulasuriya, V 2015, 'Predictions and Observations of Soft Clay Foundations Stabilized with Geosynthetic Drains and Vacuum Surcharge' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. 209-240.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This chapter starts with an introduction of a revised analytical model of radial drainage with vacuum preloading in both axisymmetric and plane strain conditions. Observed from large-scale radial drainage consolidation tests, the influence of vacuum pressure distribution along the drain length is examined through the dissipation of average excess pore pressure and associated settlement. The details of an appropriate conversion procedure by transforming permeability and vacuum pressure between axisymmetric and equivalent plane strain conditions are described through analytical and numerical schemes. The effects of the magnitude and distribution of vacuum pressure on soft clay consolidation are investigated on the basis of average excess pore pressure, consolidation settlement, and time analyses. The authors describe a multidrain plane strain finite element method analysis based on permeability conversion, which is used to study the behavior of embankments stabilized at the site of Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport with vacuum-assisted prefabricated vertical drains. In the field, a constant suction head is not always stable because of the occurrence of air leaks; therefore the magnitude of applied vacuum pressure was adjusted accordingly. The theoretical (numerical) predictions are compared with measured field data such as settlements, excess pore pressures, and lateral movements. The case history analysis using the authors' model indicates improved accuracy of the predictions in relation to the field observations. The data indicate that the efficiency of the prefabricated vertical drains depends on the magnitude and distribution of vacuum pressure as well as on the extent of air leak protection provided in practice.

Indraratna, B, Sathananthan, I, Bamunawita, C & Balasubramaniam, AS 2015, 'Theoretical and Numerical Perspectives and Field Observations for the Design and Performance Evaluation of Embankments Constructed on Soft Marine Clay' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. 83-122.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. In this chapter, a two-dimensional plane strain solution is adopted for the embankment analysis, which includes the effects of a smear zone caused by mandrel driven vertical drains. The equivalent (transformed) permeability coefficients are incorporated in finite element codes, employing modified Cam-clay theory. Selected numerical studies have been carried out to study the effect of embankment slope, construction rate, and drain spacing on the failure of the soft clay foundation. Finally, the observed and predicted performances of well-instrumented full-scale trial embankments built on soft Malaysian marine clay have been discussed in detail. The predicted results agree with the field measurements.

Oboler, S & González, DJ 2015, 'The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law, and Social Movements' in Oboler, S & Gonzalez, D (eds), Latinos and Latinas in Contemporary Politics, Law and Social Movements, Oxford University Press, pp. 227-229.
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Pallewattha, M, Indraratna, B & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Improvement of soil stability along rail corridors through native vegetation' in Chen, Z, Wei, C, Sun, D & Xu, Y (eds), Unsaturated Soil Mechanics - from Theory to Practice, CRC Press, pp. 835-838.
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Pathirage, U, Banasiak, L, Indraratna, B & Lugg, G 2015, 'Numerical Modeling of Clogging in a Permeable Reactive Barrier and Rejuvenation by Alkaline Fluid Injection in the Shoalhaven Floodplain, Australia' in Ground Improvement Case Histories, Elsevier, pp. 205-238.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A permeable reactive barrier (PRB) was utilized to remediate the acidic water generated from acid sulfate soil (ASS) in the Shoalhaven Floodplain approximately 100. km south of Sydney, Australia, where acidic groundwater is a severe environmental, social, and economic problem. After testing more than 20 alkaline materials, recycled concrete aggregates were chosen as a capable alkalinity source and utilized in this PRB. The current study aims to simulate the performance of the PRB by coupling geochemistry with geohydraulics. Secondary minerals precipitate during the remediation process, causing chemical clogging, which reduces the porosity and hydraulic conductivity of the reactive material. Laboratory column experiments were carried out to understand the remediation process taking place between acidic groundwater and recycled concrete particles. Commercially available finite different codes, MODFLOW and RT3D, were used to simulate the time-dependent modeling of the PRB. An original geochemical algorithm was developed capturing all the chemical reactions and fed into RT3D. The column experiments and field results are in good agreement with the model calculations, which proved that the reduction in hydraulic conductivity due to mineral precipitation occurs mostly at the entrance zone of the PRB and was insignificant in the middle and exit zones after 6 years of operation.A long-term column test was conducted to assess the reconditioning of armored recycled concrete with alkaline wastewater, with the aim to restore and enhance the acid neutralization capacity (ANC) and longevity of the PRB. Benefits of the alkaline wastewater injection included sharp but short enhancement of the concretes' ANC, as indicated by an increase in effluent pH (pH3-7.7) and alkalinity (0-21.6mM CaCO3), and a reduction in oxidation reduction potential (530-160mV). Although results showed that the alkaline wastewater did not significantly reduce chem...

Abdullahi, S, Pradhan, B & Jebur, MN 2015, 'GIS-based sustainable city compactness assessment using integration of MCDM, Bayes theorem and RADAR technology', Geocarto International, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 365-387.
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Abdullahi, S, Pradhan, B & Jebur, MN 2015, 'GIS-based sustainable city compactness assessment using integration of MCDM, Bayes theorem and RADAR technology', Geocarto International, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 365-387.

Abdullahi, S, Pradhan, B, Mansor, S & Shariff, ARM 2015, 'GIS-based modeling for the spatial measurement and evaluation of mixed land use development for a compact city', GIScience & Remote Sensing, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 18-39.
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Abdullahi, S, Pradhan, B, Mansor, S & Shariff, ARM 2015, 'Urban sustainability analysis through Compact city: GIS-based modeling for spatial measurement and evaluation of mixed landuse development', GIScience and Remote Sensing, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 18-39.

Abolhasan, M, Lipman, J, Ni, W & Hagelstein, B 2015, 'Software-Defined Wireless Networking: Centralized, Distributed, or Hybrid?', IEEE NETWORK, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 32-38.
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© 2015 IEEE. Scalability is a key issue in large scale WDNs, such as vehicular networks and device-to-device networks. To address the issue, this article extends the SDN concept, and presents a new network architecture that eliminates the need of multi-hop flooding for route discovery, thereby enabling WDNs to scale. The key idea of the new architecture is to split network control and data forwarding by using two separate frequency bands. Another important aspect of the architecture is that computational complexity of routing is split between the SDN controller and the forwarding nodes, thereby allowing nodes to make distributed routing decisions. As a result, network control of the new architecture has a hybrid structure, which improves the operability and scalability of large scale WDNs. Our case study shows that the new architecture is able to substantially improve scalability and reliability of WDNs, especially in mobile environments.

Al-sharif, AAA & Pradhan, B 2015, 'A novel approach for predicting the spatial patterns of urban expansion by combining the chi-squared automatic integration detection decision tree, Markov chain and cellular automata models in GIS', Geocarto International, vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 858-881.
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Alsharif, AAA, Pradhan, B, Mansor, S & Shafri, HZM 2015, 'Urban expansion assessment by using remotely sensed data and the relative Shannon entropy model in GIS: A case study of Tripoli, Libya', Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 55-71.
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Urban growth is a spatial dynamic phenomenon that indicates population growth, economic expansion, city importance level, and so on. The use of current and historical data in urbanization analysis is necessary in urban spatial studies and future urban planning. This research aims to study, examine, and assess the urban expansion of Tripoli spatially and temporally by using remotely sensed data, geographic information systems (GIS), and the statistical relative Shannon entropy model. Remotely sensed data (four satellite images from 1984, 1996, 2002, and 2010) and GIS were used to determine the extent of urban area and urban growth in Tripoli in five different directions. Shannon’s entropy model was implemented to analyze and assess urban expansion trends as a process and pattern in the study area. Results show that the Tripoli metropolitan area has a high level of sprawl along its urban expansion history. The hypothesis employed for Shannon’s entropy zone division produces good insights on overall urban growth, urban growth direction, and specific urban growth over time. The obtained results provide good guidance for modeling urban sprawl processes, understanding urbanization causative factors, and predicting future urban patterns. Furthermore, the findings of current paper can be used by decision makers and urban planners to identify past and present urban expansions tendencies to prepare for future urban demands.

Althuwaynee, OF, Pradhan, B & Ahmad, N 2015, 'Estimation of rainfall threshold and its use in landslide hazard mapping of Kuala Lumpur metropolitan and surrounding areas', Landslides, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 861-875.
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Athukorala, R, Indraratna, B & Vinod, JS 2015, 'Disturbed State Concept-Based Constitutive Model for Lignosulfonate-Treated Silty Sand', International Journal of Geomechanics, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 04015002-04015002.
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Azari, B, Fatahi, B & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'Numerical analysis of vertical drains accelerated consolidation considering combined soil disturbance and visco-plastic behaviour', GEOMECHANICS AND ENGINEERING, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 187-220.
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© 2015 Techno-Press, Ltd. Soil disturbance induced by installation of mandrel driven vertical drains decreases the in situ horizontal hydraulic conductivity of the soil in the vicinity of the drains, decelerating the consolidation rate. According to available literature, several different profiles for the hydraulic conductivity variation with the radial distance from the vertical drain, influencing the excess pore water pressure dissipation rate, have been identified. In addition, it is well known that the visco-plastic properties of the soil also influence the excess pore water pressure dissipation rate and consequently the settlement rate. In this study, a numerical solution adopting an elastic visco-plastic model with nonlinear creep function incorporated in the consolidation equations has been developed to investigate the effects of disturbed zone properties on the time dependent behaviour of soft soil deposits improved with vertical drains and preloading. The employed elastic visco-plastic model is based on the framework of the modified Cam-Clay model capturing soil creep during excess pore water pressure dissipation. Besides, nonlinear variations of creep coefficient with stress and time and permeability variations during the consolidation process are considered. The predicted results have been compared with Väsby test fill measurements. According to the results, different variations of the hydraulic conductivity profile in the disturbed zone result in varying excess pore water pressure dissipation rate and consequently varying the effective vertical stresses in the soil profile. Thus, the creep coefficient and the creep strain limit are notably influenced resulting in significant changes in the predicted settlement rate.

Banasiak, LJ, Indraratna, B, Lugg, G, Pathirage, U, McIntosh, G & Rendell, N 2015, 'Permeable reactive barrier rejuvenation by alkaline wastewater', Environmental Geotechnics, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 45-55.
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Chemical armouring of recycled concrete in a permeable reactive barrier (PRB) used for the neutralisation of acidic groundwater in acid sulfate soil terrain significantly decreases its acid neutralising capacity (ANC) by approximately 50% compared with its theoretical ANC. A long-term column test was conducted under simulated field groundwater conditions to assess the re-conditioning of armoured recycled concrete aggregates with alkaline wastewater, with the aim to restore and enhance the ANC and longevity of the PRB. The benefits of alkaline wastewater injection included sharp but short enhancement of the recycled concretes’ ANC, as indicated by an increase in effluent pH (pH 3 to 7·7) and alkalinity (0 to 21·6 mM CaCO3) and a reduction in oxidation reduction potential (ORP, 530 to 160–200 mV). While the results showed that the alkaline wastewater did not significantly reduce chemical armouring, it aided in the liberation of lodged mineral precipitates between concrete aggregates, reducing the severity of chemical and physical clogging. Batch tests demonstrated that, when exposed to acidic water, the ANC of recycled concrete pre-conditioned with alkaline wastewater was enhanced as indicated by higher pH, lower ORP and greater release of calcium (Ca2+) and alkalinity, compared to non-pre-conditioned concrete.

Biabani, MM & Indraratna, B 2015, 'An evaluation of the interface behaviour of rail subballast stabilised with geogrids and geomembranes', Geotextiles and Geomembranes, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 240-249.
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Bu, GP, Chanda, S, Guan, H, Jo, J, Blumenstein, M & Loo, YC 2015, 'Crack detection using a texture analysis-based technique for visual bridge inspection', Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 41-48.
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Bridge inspection is a pathway to bridge condition rating assessment, and is an essential element of any bridge management system (BMS). The success of a BMS is highly dependent on the quality of bridge inspection outcomes and accurate estimation of future bridge condition ratings. However, existing visual bridge inspection methods suffer several limitations due to human subjective judgment. In order to minimise such limitations, a feasibility study has been performed to enhance the current visual inspection method using optical image processing techniques. However, the accuracy of the inspection outcomes still requires further improvement. This paper proposes an automatic bridge inspection approach employing wavelet-based image features along with support vector machines (SVM) for automatic detection of cracks in bridge images. A two-stage approach is followed, in the first stage, a decision is made as whether an image should undergo a pre-processing step (depending on image characteristics); in the second stage, wavelet features are extracted from the image using a sliding window texture analysis-based technique. Consequently, an average accuracy of 92% (effect of training image types on accuracy) is obtained even when undertaking experiments with noisy and complex bridge images.

Bu, GP, Lee, JH, Guan, H, Loo, YC & Blumenstein, M 2015, 'Prediction of Long-Term Bridge Performance: Integrated Deterioration Approach with Case Studies', Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 04014089-04014089.
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Bui, DT, Pradhan, B, Revhaug, I, Nguyen, DB, Pham, HV & Bui, QN 2015, 'A novel hybrid evidential belief function-based fuzzy logic model in spatial prediction of rainfall-induced shallow landslides in the Lang Son city area (Vietnam)', Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 243-271.
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Burton, GJ, Pineda, JA, Sheng, D & Airey, D 2015, 'Microstructural changes of an undisturbed, reconstituted and compacted high plasticity clay subjected to wetting and drying', Engineering Geology, vol. 193, pp. 363-373.
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Cai, Q, Turner, BD, Sheng, D & Sloan, S 2015, 'The kinetics of fluoride sorption by zeolite: Effects of cadmium, barium and manganese', Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, vol. 177-178, pp. 136-147.
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Chan, B, Guan, H, Jo, J & Blumenstein, M 2015, 'Towards UAV-based bridge inspection systems: a review and an application perspective', Structural Monitoring and Maintenance, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 283-300.
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© 2015 Techno-Press, Ltd. Visual condition inspections remain paramount to assessing the current deterioration status of a bridge and assigning remediation or maintenance tasks so as to ensure the ongoing serviceability of the structure. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing backlog of maintenance activities. Existing research reveals that this is attributable to the labour-intensive, subjective and disruptive nature of the current bridge inspection method. Current processes ultimately require lane closures, traffic guidance schemes and inspection equipment. This not only increases the whole-of-life costs of the bridge, but also increases the risk to the travelling public as issues affecting the structural integrity may go unaddressed. As a tool for bridge condition inspections, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or, drones, offer considerable potential, allowing a bridge to be visually assessed without the need for inspectors to walk across the deck or utilise under-bridge inspection units. With current inspection processes placing additional strain on the existing bridge maintenance resources, the technology has the potential to significantly reduce the overall inspection costs and disruption caused to the travelling public. In addition to this, the use of automated aerial image capture enables engineers to better understand a situation through the 3D spatial context offered by UAV systems. However, the use of UAV for bridge inspection involves a number of critical issues to be resolved, including stability and accuracy of control, and safety to people. SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) is a technique that could be used by a UAV to build a map of the bridge underneath, while simultaneously determining its location on the constructed map. While there are considerable economic and risk-related benefits created through introducing entirely new ways of inspecting bridges and visualising information, there also remain hindrances to...

Chen, C, Indraratna, B, McDowell, G & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Discrete element modelling of lateral displacement of a granular assembly under cyclic loading', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 69, pp. 474-484.
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Chen, Q & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Deformation Behavior of Lignosulfonate-Treated Sandy Silt under Cyclic Loading', Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, vol. 141, no. 1, pp. 06014015-06014015.
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Chen, Q & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Shear behaviour of sandy silt treated with lignosulfonate', Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 52, no. 8, pp. 1180-1185.
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Chemical stabilizers (e.g., cement, lime, gypsum, and other alkaline admixtures) have been widely used to enhance the strength and compressibility properties of subgrade soils. However, traditional chemical stabilizers are not always acceptable in Australia because they often pose a threat to the surrounding environment. Moreover, traditionally treated soils usually exhibit excessive brittle behaviour, which is often undesirable for transport infrastructure such as rail embankments and airport runways. To establish an alternative stabilizer that could overcome the above problems, this note presents a series of experimental results on the use of lignosulfonate (by-product of timber and paper industry), an environmentally friendly soil stabilizer effective for treating fine sandy silt that formed the bulk of an embankment fill at Penrith, Australia. The effects of lignosulfonate treatment on the shear behaviour of treated soil, including the stress–strain relationships, and the corresponding development of excess pore pressure and volumetric responses under monotonic triaxial testing are discussed.

Chen, X, Li, JC, Cai, MF, Zou, Y & Zhao, J 2015, 'Experimental Study on Wave Propagation Across a Rock Joint with Rough Surface', Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 2225-2234.
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Chiaro, G, Indraratna, B & Tasalloti, SMA 2015, 'Predicting the behaviour of coal wash and steel slag mixtures under triaxial conditions', Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 367-373.
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The effective reuse and recycling of granular waste materials, namely coal wash (CW) and basic oxygen steel slag (BOS), are economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable. Nevertheless, due to the heterogeneity of these granular waste materials, the ultimate adoption of CW and BOS as structural fills must be supported by constitutive relationships capable of accurately describing the stress–strain behaviour under representative field loading conditions. In this paper, a critical state surface generalized plasticity model is presented, and its predictive capability using an explicit set of soil parameters is demonstrated for drained triaxial compression tests.

Chiaro, G, Indraratna, B, Tasalloti, SMA & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Optimisation of coal wash–slag blend as a structural fill', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Ground Improvement, vol. 168, no. 1, pp. 33-44.
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Coal wash (CW) and basic oxygen steel slag fines (BOS) are by-products of the coal mining and steel industries, respectively. Their effective reuse and recycling through large-scale geotechnical projects, such as port reclamation, is economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable. In this study, CW and BOS were blended in order to explore the possibility to obtain synthetic fills having geotechnical properties similar or superior to conventional fills, therefore suitable as a structural fill for the Port Kembla Outer Harbour reclamation near Wollongong City, Australia. A framework with four levels of acceptance is proposed in this paper to select granular waste as structural fill materials. This framework was used for optimising the CW-BOS blend. It was found that for the Port Kembla Outer Harbour reclamation, a CW-BOS blend with a BOS content between 30 and 45% can meet most geotechnical specifications (i.e. high shear strength and bearing capacity, low swelling and particle breakage levels, and adequate permeability) required for a suitable structural fill above the high tidal level.

Cooper, CS, Mukunthan, A, Safaei, F, Ros, M, Franklin, DR & Abolhasan, M 2015, 'Including general environmental effects in K-factor approximation for rice-distributed VANET channels.', Phys. Commun., vol. 14, pp. 32-44.
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This paper presents a method of approximating the Rician K-factor based on the instantaneous static environment. The strongest signal propagation paths are resolved in order to determine specular and diffuse powers for approximation. The model is experimentally validated in two different urban areas in New South Wales, Australia. Good agreement between the model and experimental data was obtained over short-range communication links, demonstrating the suitability of the model in urban VANETs. The paper concludes with recommendations for methods to account for vehicles in the simulation and incorporating additional phenomena (such as scattering) in the approximation.

Dadras, M, Shafri, HZM, Ahmad, N, Pradhan, B & Safarpour, S 2015, 'Spatio-temporal analysis of urban growth from remote sensing data in Bandar Abbas city, Iran', The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Science, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 35-52.
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Dehnavi, A, Aghdam, IN, Pradhan, B & Morshed Varzandeh, MH 2015, 'A new hybrid model using step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) technique and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for regional landslide hazard assessment in Iran', CATENA, vol. 135, pp. 122-148.
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Dibs, H, Mansor, S, Ahmad, N & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Band-to-band registration model for near-equatorial Earth observation satellite images with the use of automatic control point extraction', International Journal of Remote Sensing, vol. 36, no. 8, pp. 2184-2200.
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Ding, Y, Huang, W, Sheng, D & Sloan, SW 2015, 'Numerical study on finite element implementation of hypoplastic models', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 68, pp. 78-90.
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Diyaljee, V 2015, 'Discussion of “Behavior of Geocell-Reinforced Subballast Subjected to Cyclic Loading in Plane-Strain Condition” by Buddhima Indraratna, M. Mahdi Biabani, and Sanjay Nimbalkar', Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, vol. 141, no. 10, pp. 07015027-07015027.
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Fatahi, B & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'Influence of Chemical Stabilisation on Permeability of Municipal Solid Wastes', Geotechnical and Geological Engineering, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 455-466.
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© 2014, Springer International Publishing Switzerland. There are a number of important challenges in redevelopment of closed landfill sites including high permeation, complexity in settlement behaviour, weak shear strength, gas emission as well as health and safety issues. This paper is a part of a thorough experimental study on chemically stabilised old landfill sites. The decomposed waste materials were collected from Bankstown landfill located in the south-west of Sydney. The samples were prepared by mixing MSW, with a mixture of fly ash–quicklime with a ratio of 3:1 in percentages of 5, 10, 15 and 20 of fly ash by dry weight of the MSW. Permeability of treated and untreated MSW samples has been estimated during consolidation of MSW specimens in an automated triaxial cell. According to the results, increasing the content of fly ash–quicklime in the MSW specimen reduced the coefficient of permeability, the coefficient of consolidation and the permeability change index (Ck). The coefficient of permeability for an untreated specimen was 6.2 × 10−8 m/s and this figure was reduced to 3.2 × 10−8 m/s in specimens mixed with 26 % fly ash–quicklime (under an average confining pressure of 250 kPa). Increasing the effective confining pressure up to the pre-consolidation pressure caused no significant change in the coefficient of permeability. However at higher pressures the reduction was tangible. It is found that the chemical stabilisation effectively reduces the permeability of the MSW layer. This reduction in the coefficient of permeability can be attributed to a reduction in the bleed channels and void spaces due to the conversion of soluble calcium hydroxide to cementitious compounds. It will be beneficial and effective in redevelopment of closed landfill sites incorporating chemical treatments. The outcomes of this study may facilitate the hydraulic properties of chemically treated closed landfill sites.

Ghobadi, Y, Pradhan, B, Sayyad, GA, Kabiri, K & Falamarzi, Y 2015, 'Simulation of hydrological processes and effects of engineering projects on the Karkheh River Basin and its wetland using SWAT2009', Quaternary International, vol. 374, pp. 144-153.
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Ghobadi, Y, Pradhan, B, Shafri, HZM & Kabiri, K 2015, 'Assessment of spatial relationship between land surface temperature and landuse/cover retrieval from multi-temporal remote sensing data in South Karkheh Sub-basin, Iran', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 525-537.
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Ghobadi, Y, Pradhan, B, Shafri, HZM, bin Ahmad, N & Kabiri, K 2015, 'Spatio-temporal remotely sensed data for analysis of the shrinkage and shifting in the Al Hawizeh wetland', Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, vol. 187, no. 1, p. 4156.
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Ha, Q, Royel, S, Li, J & Li, Y 2015, 'Hysteresis Modeling of Smart Structure MR Devices using Describing Functions', IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1-1.
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© 1996-2012 IEEE. Magnetorheological (MR) devices have been quite promising for semiactive control, thanks to their capability of adjusting structural parameters, under a low-power control signal, to effectively withstand severe dynamic loadings including seismic events. MR devices, using visco-elastic and ferromagnetic materials, are subject to hysteresis, which may degrade the performance of smart structures. Therefore, this multivalued nonlinearity needs to be properly modeled and characterized for control and health monitoring. As engineering structures operate as low-pass filter in normal conditions, it is suitable to use the classical describing function (DF) method for modeling and analysis of the hysteretic behaviors in MR device-based smart structures. Data obtained from characterizing tests are recorded in look-up tables to obtain the DFs for these devices, using a curve-fitting technique. The proposed DFs are then useful in structural frequency analysis. Experimental results are reported for a steel beam with MR pin joints subject to quake-induced vibrations provided by a shake table.

Han, Y, Cao, Q & Ji, J 2015, 'Nonlinear Dynamics of a Smooth and Discontinuous Oscillator with Multiple Stability', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIFURCATION AND CHAOS, vol. 25, no. 13.
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He, X & Liang, D 2015, 'Study of the Runout of Granular Columns with SPH Methods', International Journal of Offshore and Polar Engineering, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 281-287.
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Heitor, A, Indraratna, B & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Effect of suction history on the small strain response of a dynamically compacted soil', Australian Geomechanics Journal, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 61-68.
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Small strain behaviour is a key indicator in the assessment of the performance of compacted fills. Compaction conditions i.e. initial moisture content and applied energy, govern compaction effectiveness and thus the structure and matric suction of compacted soil. During the service life of earth structures, they experience changes in hydraulic behaviour owing to climatic changes. While the results of previous research studies indicate that the effect of changes in suction on the dynamic response is significant, only limited research has been engaged in the assessment of the effect of post-compacted changes in suction induced by periods of intensive precipitation (i.e. wetting) and drought (i.e. drying). The seasonal fluctuations of moisture reflected in the soil's suction history have an important impact on the geomechanical performance of compacted soil. In this paper, the aspects related to the effect of suction history of a compacted silty sand soil subjected to cycles of wetting and drying are described. The results not only confirm the importance of the recent suction ratio (or CSR) in governing the mechanical response at small strain but also suggest that subsequent wetting-drying cycles further induce hysteretic changes, particularly when following the wetting paths.

HEITOR, A, INDRARATNA, B & RUJIKIATKAMJORN, C 2015, 'The role of compaction energy on the small strain properties of a compacted silty sand subjected to drying–wetting cycles', Géotechnique, vol. 65, no. 9, pp. 717-727.
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The elastic properties of a soil are usually investigated to describe its engineering behaviour. The results of previous studies indicate that the effect of changes in suction on the elastic response at a small strain level of soils is significant during compaction and post-compaction periods. Limited efforts have been focused on quantifying those post-compacted responses due to the changes in suction induced by wetting and drying cycles. During their service life, most earth structures experience changes in hydraulic behaviour owing to climatic changes. These seasonal fluctuations in turn impact on the geomechanical performance of compacted soil. In this paper the aspects related to the elastic properties of compacted soils subjected to cycles of drying and wetting are described. Particular emphasis is placed on the effect of compaction energy on the hysteric behaviour (i.e. amplitude of the hysteresis loop) and its dependence on the initial stress state conditions and suction history. The results not only confirm the importance of the current suction in governing the shear and compression velocities and associated moduli, but they also suggest that subsequent drying–wetting cycles or suction history can further induce hysteretic changes, particularly along the wetting paths.

Ho, L & Fatahi, B 2015, 'Analytical solution for the two-dimensional plane strain consolidation of an unsaturated soil stratum subjected to time-dependent loading', COMPUTERS AND GEOTECHNICS, vol. 67, pp. 1-16.
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© 2015. This paper introduces an exact analytical solution predicting variations in excess pore-air and pore-water pressures and settlement considering the two-dimensional (2D) plane strain consolidation of an unsaturated soil stratum subjected to different time-dependent loadings. Based on the proposed solution, the distributions of excess pore pressures along vertical and horizontal directions can be determined. The general solution is first expressed in a series of eigenfunctions of homogeneous partial differential equations (PDEs) and is then substituted into the governing flow equations. Using term-by-term differentiation and the orthogonality of the sine function, the governing equations become ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Once the complex domain is obtained by applying the Laplace transformation technique, the closed-form analytical solutions describing the dissipation of excess pore-air and pore-water pressures can be obtained by taking a Laplace inverse. In this study, four external loadings, including ramping, asymptotic, sinusoid and damped sine wave, are simulated and incorporated into the proposed solutions. For the data analysis, the 2D consolidation behavior is investigated against variations in the permeability ratio (ka/kw). Additionally, parametric studies regarding loading functions are presented in this paper.

Ho, L, Fatahi, B & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'A closed form analytical solution for two-dimensional plane strain consolidation of unsaturated soil stratum', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS, vol. 39, no. 15, pp. 1665-1692.
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© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This paper discusses the excess pore-air and pore-water pressure dissipations and the average degree of consolidation in the 2D plane strain consolidation of an unsaturated soil stratum using eigenfunction expansion and Laplace transformation techniques. In this study, the application of a constant external loading on a soil surface is assumed to immediately generate uniformly or linearly distributed initial excess pore pressures. The general solutions consisting of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues are first proposed. The Laplace transform is then applied to convert the time variable t in partial differential equations into the Laplace complex argument s. Once the domain is obtained, a simplified set of equations with variable s can be achieved. The final analytical solutions can be computed by taking a Laplace inverse. The proposed equations predict the two-dimensional consolidation behaviour of an unsaturated soil stratum capturing the uniformly and linearly distributed initial excess pore pressures. This study investigates the effects of isotropic and anisotropic permeability conditions on variations of excess pore pressures and the average degree of consolidation. Additionally, isochrones of excess pore pressures along vertical and horizontal directions are presented. It is found that the initial distribution of pore pressures, varying with depth, results in considerable effects on the pore-water pressure dissipation rate whilst it has insignificant effects on the excess pore-air pressure dissipation rate.

Hokmabadi, AS, Fatahi, B & Samali, B 2015, 'Physical Modeling of Seismic Soil-Pile-Structure Interaction for Buildings on Soft Soils', International Journal of Geomechanics, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 04014046-04014046.
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers. The present research intends to study the effects of the seismic soil-pile-structure interaction (SSPSI) on the dynamic response of buildings with various heights by conducting a series of shaking table tests on 5-, 10-story, and 15-story model structures. Two types of foundations for each case are investigated, including (1) a fixed-base structure, representing the situation excluding the soil-structure interaction; and (2) a structure supported by an end-bearing pile foundation in soft soil. An advanced laminar soil container has been designed that uses three-dimensional numerical modeling to minimize the boundary effects and to simulate free-field motion during the shaking table tests. Four real earthquake events, including Kobe 1995, Northridge 1994, El Centro 1940, and Hachinohe 1968, are imposed to each model. According to the experimental measurements, it is observed that the SSPSI amplifies the maximum lateral deflections and in turn interstory drifts of the structures supported by end-bearing pile foundations in comparison with the fixed-base structures. The rocking component plays an important role in increasing the lateral deflection of the superstructures, which can shift the performance level of the structures to near collapse or even collapse levels and as a result should be assessed precisely in the seismic design of buildings resting on soft soils.

Hong, H, Pradhan, B, Xu, C & Tien Bui, D 2015, 'Spatial prediction of landslide hazard at the Yihuang area (China) using two-class kernel logistic regression, alternating decision tree and support vector machines', CATENA, vol. 133, pp. 266-281.
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Huang, W, Huang, L, Sheng, D & Sloan, SW 2015, 'DEM modelling of shear localization in a plane Couette shear test of granular materials', Acta Geotechnica, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 389-397.
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Hussaini, SKK, Indraratna, B & Vinod, JS 2015, 'Application of Optical-Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors in Monitoring the Rail Track Deformations', Geotechnical Testing Journal, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 20140123-20140123.
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Hussaini, SKK, Indraratna, B & Vinod, JS 2015, 'Performance assessment of geogrid-reinforced railroad ballast during cyclic loading', Transportation Geotechnics, vol. 2, pp. 99-107.
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© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. Recently, rail practitioners have resorted to the use of geogrids as a low-cost solution to stabilise ballast. In view of this, large-scale cyclic tests have been conducted on reinforced ballast using a modified process simulation test (MPST) apparatus at a loading frequency of 20. Hz, with geogrid placed at the subballast-ballast interface and within the ballast. Fresh latite basalt having a mean particle size of 35. mm and geogrids with different aperture sizes was used. The experimental results indicate that the geogrid arrests the lateral spreading of ballast, reduces the extent of permanent vertical settlement and minimises the particle breakage. However, the in track performance is shown to be influenced by the shear behaviour at the ballast-geogrid interface, wherein the extent of both lateral and vertical deformation reduce with the increase in shear strength at the ballast-geogrid interface. Moreover, the geogrid also helps in minimising the extent of differential track settlement that arises due to the difference in sleeper-ballast contact stress along the track length. The efficiency of geogrid is found to be identical at vertical stresses of 230 and 460. kPa. These test results highlight the role of geogrid in stabilising ballast, thus encouraging its use in railway applications.

Idrees, MO, Saeidi, V, Pradhan, B & Shafri, HZM 2015, 'Maximizing Urban Features Extraction from Multi-sensor Data with Dempster-Shafer Theory and HSI Data Fusion Techniques', Asian Journal of Applied Sciences (ISSN: 2321–0893), vol. 3, no. 02.

Indraratna, B 2015, 'Editorial', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Ground Improvement, vol. 168, no. 1, pp. 1-2.
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Indraratna, B, Heitor, A & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Ground improvement methods for port infrastructure expansion', Geotechnical Engineering, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 125-130.
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The demand for reliable and efficient transport infrastructure is vital to sustain Australia's economic growth and quality of life. Due to the forecasted increase in the freight trade demand, existing Ports will need to undergo major expansion, e.g. for accommodating berths suitable for bulk cargoes and container handling. To maximise the use of available land, typically port expansions projects involve land reclamation which includes the use of dredged materials (e.g. Port of Brisbane) or other granular fill materials locally available (e.g. Port Kembla). In both situations, ground improvement methods need to be implemented to ensure the fills and the foundations for the port infrastructure have sufficient shear strength and bearing capacity to comply with serviceability requirements in terms of settlement and lateral displacements. In this paper, typical ground improvement methods employed in Port infrastructure are described and their application in two different Australian Port Infrastructure projects is discussed.

Indraratna, B, Israr, J & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 2015, 'Geometrical Method for Evaluating the Internal Instability of Granular Filters Based on Constriction Size Distribution', Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, vol. 141, no. 10, pp. 04015045-04015045.
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Indraratna, B, Kumara, C, Zhu, S-P & Sloan, S 2015, 'Mathematical Modeling and Experimental Verification of Fluid Flow through Deformable Rough Rock Joints', International Journal of Geomechanics, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 04014065-04014065.
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Indraratna, B, Mahdi Biabani, M & Nimbalkar, S 2015, 'Closure to “Behavior of Geocell-Reinforced Subballast Subjected to Cyclic Loading in Plane-Strain Condition” by Buddhima Indraratna, M. Mahdi Biabani, and Sanjay Nimbalkar', Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, vol. 141, no. 10, pp. 07015028-07015028.
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Indraratna, B, Ngo, NT, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Sloan, SW 2015, 'Coupled discrete element–finite difference method for analysing the load-deformation behaviour of a single stone column in soft soil', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 63, pp. 267-278.
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Experimental studies and numerical modelling of the deformation of soft clay stabilised by stone columns have been conducted over the past few decades. Continuum-based numerical models have provided valuable insight into the prediction of settlement, lateral deformation, and stress and strain-rate dependent behaviour of stone columns at a macroscopic scale, but because they consist of granular material such as crushed rock, gravel, and waste rock aggregates, their behaviour is influenced by inter-particle micromechanics and cannot be modelled properly using these models. In this paper a novel coupled model of the discrete element method (DEM) and finite difference method (FDM) is presented to study the deformation of a single stone column installed in soft ground. In this coupled discrete-continuum method, PFC2D and FLAC were used to model the interaction between the stone column and surrounding clay, respectively. The contact forces at the interface between the two zones were determined through a socket connection that allows the DEM to transfer forces and moments to the FDM and vice versa. The predicted results were comparable to the data measured experimentally, showing that the coupled discrete-continuum model proposed in this study could simulate the load-deformation behaviour of a stone column installed in clay. The contact force distribution and shear stress contour developed in the stone column and surrounding clay were captured to provide a better understanding of the load-deformation behaviour of the stone column.

Indraratna, B, Ni, J, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Zhong, R 2015, 'A partially drained model for soft soils under cyclic loading considering cyclic parameter degradation', Australian Geomechanics Journal, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 89-95.
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Cyclic loading induced foundation instabilities including loss of bearing capacity and excessive plastic deformation of the subgrade are among the major concerns for the design and construction of transport infrastructure. There were limited studies on the modelling of cyclic loading of soft soils due to its complexities compared to static loading. In this study, a model for soft clays under partially drained condition subject to cyclic triaxial loading has been developed based on the Modified Cam-clay theory. The yield surface contraction for elastic unloading was governed by two additional cyclic degradation parameters to the modified Cam-clay model. This model was validated using the results of a series of undrained and partially drained cyclic triaxial loading tests on kaolin. A good agreement between the numerical prediction and the measured excess pore pressures was obtained. Furthermore, the factors which influence the cyclic performance of soft soils, e.g. the cyclic stress ratios, the anisotropic consolidation stress and the coefficient of consolidation were investigated. This model was then applied to the consolidation of soft soils under cyclic loading, which represents the application of partially penetrated vertical drains for road and rail infrastructure, at the soft soil sites for a rail project in Sandgate, NSW. The objective of the partially penetrated drains within this deep estuarine soil layer was to consolidate the shallow soft clays and stabilise the new built tracks.

Indraratna, B, Pathirage, U & Banasiak, L 2015, 'A review of acidic groundwater remediation in the shoalhaven floodplain in Australia', Geotechnical Engineering, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 41-46.
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Acid sulfate soils can be found around low-lying coastal floodplains. Acidic groundwater generated from acid sulfate soils creates adverse conditions to vegetation and aquatic life and corrodes steel and concrete infrastructure. As long as these soils are undisturbed and below the groundwater table, they are chemically inert. Therefore, it is important to maintain the groundwater table above the sulfidic soil horizon. Modified floodgates and weirs have been implemented in these low-lying areas to improve water quality. Nevertheless, these methods are not promising in low-lying areas because of the risk of flooding. As a solution, a pilot-scale permeable reactive barrier was installed and has proven to be a promising technology for long-term remediation. This paper presents a review of the above mentioned methods used for acidic groundwater remediation in coastal Australia with detailed field verification data.

Indraratna, B, Perera, D, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Kelly, R 2015, 'Soil disturbance analysis due to vertical drain installation', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Geotechnical Engineering, vol. 168, no. 3, pp. 236-246.
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The installation of drains creates a disturbed region known as a smear zone where the change in the clay structure affects the horizontal permeability and compressibility. The parameters required to characterise the smear effect are the extent of the smear zone and the ratio of the horizontal coefficient of permeability in the undisturbed zone and in the smear zone. Only limited studies have been carried out on different aspects of soil disturbance due to driving vertical drains and its effects on the subsequent consolidation. In this paper the disturbed zone around a rectangular mandrel was characterised using soil samples obtained from the soft clay layer at various locations beneath an embankment built at Ballina, Australia, where vertical drains were installed. By determining the change in the coefficient of permeability, the water content and volume compressibility across the smear zone, the effects of soil disturbance on consolidation due to the installation of drains can be quantified using the available numerical model.

Indraratna, B, Thirukumaran, S, Brown, ET & Zhu, S-P 2015, 'Modelling the Shear Behaviour of Rock Joints with Asperity Damage Under Constant Normal Stiffness', Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 179-195.
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Jahanshiri, E, bin Mohamed Shariff, AR, Amiri, F, Soom, MAM, Wayayokb, A, Buyonga, T & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Spatial soil analysis using geostatistical analysis and map Algebra', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 9775-9788.
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Jebur, MN, Pradhan, B & Tehrany, MS 2015, 'Manifestation of LiDAR-Derived Parameters in the Spatial Prediction of Landslides Using Novel Ensemble Evidential Belief Functions and Support Vector Machine Models in GIS', IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 674-690.
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Jebur, MN, Pradhan, B & Tehrany, MS 2015, 'Using ALOS PALSAR derived high-resolution DInSAR to detect slow-moving landslides in tropical forest: Cameron Highlands, Malaysia', Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, vol. 6, no. 8, pp. 741-759.
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Jebur, MN, Pradhan, B, Shafri, HZM, Yusoff, ZM & Tehrany, MS 2015, 'An integrated user-friendly ArcMAP tool for bivariate statistical modelling in geoscience applications', Geoscientific Model Development, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 881-891.
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Abstract. Modelling and classification difficulties are fundamental issues in natural hazard assessment. A geographic information system (GIS) is a domain that requires users to use various tools to perform different types of spatial modelling. Bivariate statistical analysis (BSA) assists in hazard modelling. To perform this analysis, several calculations are required and the user has to transfer data from one format to another. Most researchers perform these calculations manually by using Microsoft Excel or other programs. This process is time-consuming and carries a degree of uncertainty. The lack of proper tools to implement BSA in a GIS environment prompted this study. In this paper, a user-friendly tool, bivariate statistical modeler (BSM), for BSA technique is proposed. Three popular BSA techniques, such as frequency ratio, weight-of-evidence (WoE), and evidential belief function (EBF) models, are applied in the newly proposed ArcMAP tool. This tool is programmed in Python and created by a simple graphical user interface (GUI), which facilitates the improvement of model performance. The proposed tool implements BSA automatically, thus allowing numerous variables to be examined. To validate the capability and accuracy of this program, a pilot test area in Malaysia is selected and all three models are tested by using the proposed program. Area under curve (AUC) is used to measure the success rate and prediction rate. Results demonstrate that the proposed program executes BSA with reasonable accuracy. The proposed BSA tool can be used in numerous applications, such as natural hazard, mineral potential, hydrological, and other engineering and environmental applications.

Ji, JC 2015, 'Two families of super-harmonic resonances in a time-delayed nonlinear oscillator', JOURNAL OF SOUND AND VIBRATION, vol. 349, pp. 299-314.
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Jiang, X, Wang, J, Li, Y, Li, J & Yao, J 2015, 'Energy harvesting for powering wireless sensor networks in low-frequency and large-force environments', Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, vol. 229, no. 11, pp. 1953-1964.
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Over the past few decades, wireless sensor networks have been widely used in the field of structure health monitoring of civil, mechanical, and aerospace systems. Currently, most wireless sensor networks are battery powered and it is costly and unsustainable for maintenance because of the requirement for frequent battery replacements. As an attempt to address such issue, this paper theoretically and experimentally studies a compression-based piezoelectric energy harvester, which is suitable for the low-frequency and large-force working environments, such as in civil and transportation infrastructure applications. The proposed energy harvester employs the piezoelectric structure constructed in multilayer stack configuration to convert ambient vibrations into electrical energy. Based on the linear theory of piezoelectricity, the two-degree-of-freedom electromechanical models of the proposed energy harvester were developed to characterize its performance in generating electrical energy under external excitations. Exact closed-form expressions of the electromechanical models have been derived to analyze the maximum harvested power and the optimal resistance. The theoretical analyses were validated through several experiments for a test prototype under harmonic excitations. The test results exhibit very good agreement with the analytical analyses and numerical simulations for a range of resistive loads and input excitation levels.

Kelly, R & Sheng, D 2015, 'Numerical evaluation of clay disturbance during blade penetration in the flat dilatometer test', Géotechnique Letters, vol. 5, no. July–September, pp. 91-95.
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Khezri, N, Mohamad, H, HajiHassani, M & Fatahi, B 2015, 'The stability of shallow circular tunnels in soil considering variations in cohesion with depth', Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, vol. 49, pp. 230-240.
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Kianfar, K, Indraratna, B, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Leroueil, S 2015, 'Radial consolidation response upon the application and removal of vacuum and fill loading', CANADIAN GEOTECHNICAL JOURNAL, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 2156-2162.
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Kouretzis, GP, Ansari, Y, Pineda, J, Kelly, R & Sheng, D 2015, 'Numerical evaluation of clay disturbance during blade penetration in the flat dilatometer test', Géotechnique Letters, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 91-95.
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This paper presents a study on the amplification of horizontal soil stresses during flat dilatometer test (DMT) blade penetration based on three-dimensional total and effective stress numerical analyses, while considering stress–flow coupling and large deformations. The focus here is on saturated clays, and the effect of soil stress history on the horizontal stress index is discussed in detail. The obtained results appear to be in good agreement with published and new field data, leading to the proposal of two new expressions for estimating the overconsolidation ratio and the earth pressure coefficient at rest directly from flat dilatometer tests in estuarine clays.

Krause, M, Dackermann, U & Li, J 2015, 'Elastic wave modes for the assessment of structural timber: ultrasonic echo for building elements and guided waves for pole and pile structures', Journal of Civil Structural Health Monitoring, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 221-249.
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© 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper presents the state-of-the-art of using non-destructive testing (NDT) methods based on elastic waves for the condition assessment of structural timber. Two very promising approaches based on the propagation and reflections of elastic waves are described. While the first approach uses ultrasonic echoes for the testing of wooden building elements, the second approach uses guided waves (GW) for the testing of timber pole and pile structures. The basic principle behind both approaches is that elastic waves induced in a timber structure will propagate through its material until they encounter a change in stiffness, cross-sectional area or density, at which point they will reflect back. By measuring the wave echoes, it is possible to determine geometric properties of the tested structures such as the back wall of timber elements or the underground length of timber poles or piles. In addition, the internal state of the tested structures can be assessed since damage and defects such as rot, fungi or termite attacks will cause early reflections of the elastic waves as well as it can result in changes in wave velocity, wave attenuation and wave mode conversion. In the paper, the principles and theory of using elastic wave propagation for the assessment of wooden building elements and timber pole/pile structures are described. The state-of-the-art in testing equipment and procedures is presented and detailed examples are given on the practical application of both testing approaches. Recent encouraging developments of cutting edge research are presented along with challenges for future research.

Le, TM, Fatahi, B & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'Numerical optimisation to obtain elastic viscoplastic model parameters for soft clay', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PLASTICITY, vol. 65, pp. 1-21.
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© 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. In this paper, a numerical optimisation procedure is presented to obtain non-linear elastic viscoplastic (EVP) model parameters adopting the available consolidation data. The Crank-Nicolson finite difference scheme is applied to solve the combination of coupled partial differential equations of the EVP model and the consolidation theory. Then, the model parameters are determined applying the trust-region reflective optimisation algorithm in conjunction with the finite difference solution. The proposed solution for the model parameter determination can utilise all available consolidation data during the dissipation of the excess pore water pressure to determine the required model parameters. Moreover, in order to include creep in the numerical predictions explicitly from the very first time steps, the reference time in the elastic viscoplastic model can readily be adopted as a unit of time. Results obtained from two sets of laboratory experiments adopting hydraulic consolidation (Rowe cells) on a soft soil are reported and discussed. The proposed numerical optimisation procedure is utilised to obtain the viscoplastic model parameters adopting the experimental results, while the settlement and pore water pressure predictions are compared with experimental results to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the proposed numerical procedure. The predictions are in good agreement with the measurements, supporting the proposed numerical method as a practical tool to analyse the stress-strain behaviour of soft clay.

Le, TM, Fatahi, B, Disfani, M & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'Analyzing consolidation data to obtain elastic viscoplastic parameters of clay', GEOMECHANICS AND ENGINEERING, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 559-594.
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© 2015 Techno-Press, Ltd. A nonlinear creep function incorporated into the elastic visco-plastic model may describe the long-term soil deformation more accurately. However, by applying the conventional procedure, there are challenges to determine the model parameters due to limitation of suitable data points. This paper presents a numerical solution to obtain several parameters simultaneously for a nonlinear elastic visco-plastic (EVP) model using the available consolidation data. The finite difference scheme using the Crank-Nicolson procedure is applied to solve a set of coupled partial differential equations of the time dependent strain and pore water pressure dissipation. The model parameters are determined by applying the algorithm of trust-region reflective optimisation in conjunction with the finite difference solution. The proposed method utilises all available consolidation data during dissipation of the excess pore water pressure to determine the required model parameters. Moreover, the reference time in the elastic visco-plastic model can readily be adopted as a unit of time; denoting creep is included in the numerical predictions explicitly from the very first time steps. In this paper, the settlement predictions of thick soft clay layers are presented and discussed to evaluate and compare the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method against the graphical procedure to obtain the model parameters. In addition, comparison of the available experimental results to the numerical predictions confirms the accuracy of the numerical procedure.

Li, JC, Liu, TT, Li, HB, Liu, YQ, Liu, B & Xia, X 2015, 'Shear Wave Propagation Across Filled Joints with the Effect of Interfacial Shear Strength', Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 1547-1557.
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Li, X, Nemcik, J, Mirzaghorbanali, A, Aziz, N & Rasekh, H 2015, 'Analytical model of shear behaviour of a fully grouted cable bolt subjected to shearing', International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, vol. 80, pp. 31-39.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. A fully grouted cable bolt is normally loaded at rock joints by a combination of the axial and shear forces causing both axial extension and shear deformation of the cable. The proposed analyses presented here attempts to predict the joint shear strength and shear displacement. The analyses are based on the statically indeterminate beam theory and some basic findings and conclusions of other researchers. Parametrical investigation is performed on four influence factors including bolt pretension, joint friction angle, concrete strength and bolt installation angle. Although the true plastic moduli of the cable bolt deflecting section at failure are the essential parameters in this analysis, they are practically impossible to determine. Thus, the average cable moduli obtained from the cable tensile strength tests were used. The proposed analytical model was compared with the experimental results, showing a good agreement. This analytical work aims to develop a simple tool for the practicing geotechnical engineer to effectively evaluate the cable shear behaviour and the influence of fully grouted cable bolts on joint shear resistance.

Li, Y & Li, J 2015, 'Finite element design and analysis of adaptive base isolator utilizing laminated multiple magnetorheological elastomer layers', Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, vol. 26, no. 14, pp. 1861-1870.
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Available magnetorheological elastomer devices normally consist one to two layers of small-size magnetorheological elastomer materials. To be used in large-scale structures, magnetorheological elastomer devices with multiple larger magnetorheological elastomer materials are expected. This article addresses the critical issue in designing a large-scale device with multiple layers of low magnetic conductive magnetorheological elastomer materials, that is, magnetic circuit design. The primary target in magnetic circuit design for magnetorheological elastomer devices is to provide sufficient and uniform magnetic field to all magnetorheological elastomer layers in the device. In this article, finite element investigations are conducted. An innovative magnetic circuit design is proposed for magnetorheological elastomer base isolator with multi-layer of magnetorheological elastomer materials. In the design, laminated magnetorheological elastomer and steel structure is adopted as part of the magnetic core together with two steel blocks. Cylindrical steel tube is used as the yoke of the magnetic circuit. Two plates are placed on the top and bottom of the device to form enclosed magnetic path in the device. Finite element results showed that such innovative magnetic design is able to provide sufficient and uniform magnetic field to all magnetorheological elastomer layers, that is, 25 magnetorheological elastomer layers with thickness of 1 mm and diameter of 120 mm in this case. Finally, the influence of lateral deformation of the magnetorheological elastomer base isolator on the magnetic field is investigated. It is found that the magnetic field in magnetorheological elastomer materials deteriorates when the deformation of the device increases.

Liu, H & Madanat, S 2015, 'Adaptive optimisation methods in system-level bridge management', Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 884-896.
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We introduce an approach for modelling the structural deterioration of components of bridges for maintenance optimization purposes. The Markov chain model is found in the maintenance and repair problems since the early 60's, is introduced to the maintenance of road infrastructure in the 1980's, and is made to drive the current bridge maintenance optimization systems. While this model results into solvable programming problems and provides a solution, there are a number of criticisms associated with it. We highlight the shortfalls of the Markov model for bridge lifetime assessment and promote the use of stochastic processes.

Liu, H, Wang, J, Wijayaratna, K, Dixit, VV & Waller, ST 2015, 'Integrating the Bus Vehicle Class Into the Cell Transmission Model', IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 2620-2630.
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© 2015 IEEE. The traditional cell transmission model (CTM), a well-known dynamic traffic simulation method, does not cater to the presence of moving bottlenecks, which may be caused by buses traveling within a network. This may affect the dynamics of congestion that is present and may also affect route choice by all vehicles on a network. The main contribution of this paper is to provide an analytical formulation for a mixed traffic system that includes cars and buses, which realistically replicates moving bottlenecks. We modify the CTM model using methods from the lagged CTM to recognize speed differentials between the free-flow speed of buses and cars. In addition, the impact of capacity reduction caused by buses was incorporated. These developments led to the replication of moving bottlenecks caused by buses within the CTM framework. The formulated variant of CTM was utilized to determine a system optimal assignment that minimizes the total passenger travel time across cars and buses. The proposed modified CTM model, defined as the BUS-CTM, has been applied on a road link and a more detailed network to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. The numerical results and the depiction of the bottleneck phenomenon within the model suggests that the BUS-CTM obtains more realistic results compared with the application of the traditional CTM in a mixed car-bus transportation system. The sensitivity analysis shows that bus passenger demand, passenger occupancy of bus, and bus free-flow speeds are the key parameters that influence the system performance.

Liu, J, Ji, J, Zhou, J, Xiang, L & Zhao, L 2015, 'Adaptive group consensus in uncertain networked Euler-Lagrange systems under directed topology', NONLINEAR DYNAMICS, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 1145-1157.
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Lu, M, Wang, S, Sloan, SW, Indraratna, B & Xie, K 2015, 'Nonlinear radial consolidation of vertical drains under a general time‐variable loading', International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 51-62.
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SUMMARYBy incorporating the nonlinear variation of a soil's compressibility and permeability during the process of consolidation, an analytical solution for the radial consolidation of vertical drains has been developed for a general time‐variable loading. The general solution was verified for the cases of instantaneous loading and ramp loading. Detailed solutions were further derived for two special loading schemes: multistage loading and preloading–unloading–reloading. The nonlinear consolidation behavior of a vertical drain subjected to these two types of loading schemes was then investigated by a parametric study. The results show that the loading rate, the ratio of the compressibility index to the permeability index (Cc/Ck), and the initial stress state have a significant influence on the consolidation rate. A smaller value of Cc/Ck, a larger initial stress, or a fast loading rate always leads to a rapid consolidation rate. During the unloading period, a negative excess pore water pressure may occur, and a slower unloading rate may reduce this negative value. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Lu, M, Wang, S, Sloan, SW, Sheng, D & Xie, K 2015, 'Nonlinear consolidation of vertical drains with coupled radial–vertical flow considering well resistance', Geotextiles and Geomembranes, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 182-189.
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Maerz, NH, Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B & Bulkhi, A 2015, 'Remediation and mitigation strategies for rock fall hazards along the highways of Fayfa Mountain, Jazan Region, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 2633-2651.
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Makki Alamdari, M, Li, J & Samali, B 2015, 'Damage identification using 2-D discrete wavelet transform on extended operational mode shapes', Archives of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 698-710.
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Makki Alamdari, M, Samali, B & Li, J 2015, 'Damage localization based on symbolic time series analysis', Structural Control and Health Monitoring, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 374-393.
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The objective of this paper is to localize damage in a single or multiple state at early stages of development on the basis of the principles of symbolic dynamics. Symbolic time series analysis (STSA) of noise-contaminated responses is used for feature extraction to detect and localize a gradually evolving deterioration in the structure according to the changes in the statistical behaviour of symbol sequences. Basically, in STSA, statistical features of the symbol sequence can be used to describe the dynamic status of the system. Symbolic dynamics has some useful characteristics making it highly demanded for implementation in real-time observation application such as SHM. First, it significantly reduces the dimension of information and provides information-rich representation of the underlying data. Second, symbolic dynamics and the set of statistical measures built upon it represent a solid framework to address the main challenges of the analysis of nonstationary time data. Finally, STSA often allows capturing the main features of the underlying system whilst alleviating the effects of harmful noise. The method presented in this paper consists of four primary steps: (i) acquisition of the time series data; (ii) creating the symbol space to produce symbol sequences on the basis of the wavelet transformed version of time series data; (iii) developing the symbol probability vectors to achieve anomaly measures; and (iv) localizing damage on the basis of any sudden variation in anomaly measure of different locations. The method was applied on a flexural beam and a 2-D planar truss bridge subjected to varying Gaussian excitation in presence of 2% white noise to examine the efficiency and limitations of the method. Simulation results under various damage conditions confirmed the efficiency of the proposed approach for localization of gradually evolving deterioration in the structure; however, for the future work, the method needs to be verified by experimental data.

maleki najafabadi, S, Soffianian, A, Rahdari, V, Amiri, F, Pradhan, B & Tabatabaei, T 2015, 'Geospatial modeling to identify the effects of anthropogenic processes on landscape pattern change and biodiversity', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 1557-1569.
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Mandal, R, Roy, PP, Pal, U & Blumenstein, M 2015, 'Multi-lingual date field extraction for automatic document retrieval by machine', Information Sciences, vol. 314, pp. 277-292.
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© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Robotic intelligence has recently received significant attention in the research community. Application of such artificial intelligence can be used to perform automatic document retrieval and interpretation by a robot through query. So, it is necessary to extract the key information from the document based on the query to produce the desired feedback. For this purpose, in this paper we propose a system for automatic date field extraction from multi-lingual (English, Devnagari and Bangla scripts) handwritten documents. The date is a key piece of information, which can be used in various robotic applications such as date-wise document indexing/retrieval. In order to design the system, first the script of the document is identified, and based on the identified script, word components of each text line are classified into month and non-month classes using word-level feature extraction and classification. Next, non-month words are segmented into individual components and labelled into one of text, digit, punctuation or contraction categories. Subsequently, the date patterns are searched using the labelled components. Both numeric and semi-numeric regular expressions have been used for date part extraction. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and profile feature-based approaches are used for classification of month/non-month words. Other date components such as numerals and punctuation marks are recognised using a gradient-based feature and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. The experiments are performed on English, Devnagari and Bangla document datasets and the encouraging results obtained from the system indicate the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Moghaddam, DD, Rezaei, M, Pourghasemi, HR, Pourtaghie, ZS & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Groundwater spring potential mapping using bivariate statistical model and GIS in the Taleghan Watershed, Iran', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 913-929.
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Mohammadi, I & Khabbaz, H 2015, 'Shrinkage performance of Crumb Rubber Concrete (CRC) prepared by water-soaking treatment method for rigid pavements', Cement and Concrete Composites, vol. 62, pp. 106-116.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This investigation deals with the shrinkage properties of rubberised concrete pavement. Arrays of concrete samples were prepared with different water-cement ratios and rubber content. The experimental results revealed that the introduction of rubber into concrete mixes results in the control of shrinkage cracks if the optimised content of rubber is selected. Accordingly, the optimised rubber content was determined based on the mix characteristics, mechanical properties and the results of plastic and drying shrinkage tests. The mechanical strength, toughness, bleeding, plastic shrinkage and drying shrinkage tests were conducted in this experimental program. Analysing the results revealed that the most promising performance results were achieved for samples prepared with the rubber contents of 20% and 25% of fine aggregates, and water-cement ratios of 0.45 and 0.40, respectively.

Moore, I & Sheng, D 2015, 'Note of appreciation / Note de reconnaissance', Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. iii-v.
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Mustapha, S, Hu, Y, Nguyen, K, Alamdari, MM, Runcie, P, Dackermann, U, Nguyen, VV, Li, J & Ye, L 2015, 'Pattern recognition based on time series analysis using vibration data for structural health monitoring in civil structures', Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 106-115.
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A statistical pattern recognition technique was developed based on the time series analysis to detect cracking in steel reinforced concrete structures using vibration measurements. The technique has been developed for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The measurements were collected from single and tri-axial accel-erometers, which were integrated into sensor nodes that were developed at the National ICT Australia. The approach is based on two staged Auto-Regressive (AR) and Auto-Regressive with exogenous inputs (ARX) prediction models. The variation between the residual errors obtained from the intact and damaged states were used to define a Damage Index (DI) capable of identifying physical changed which could be due to structural damage. The effect of the severity of damage on the deviation of the AR-ARX model from its in-tact state was also scrutinised. The results of the field trial and the laboratory testing demonstrated the ability of the approach in identifying the presence of cracking and handling large volumes of data in a very efficient manner.

Neshat, A & Pradhan, B 2015, 'An integrated DRASTIC model using frequency ratio and two new hybrid methods for groundwater vulnerability assessment', Natural Hazards, vol. 76, no. 1, pp. 543-563.
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Neshat, A & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Risk assessment of groundwater pollution with a new methodological framework: application of Dempster–Shafer theory and GIS', Natural Hazards, vol. 78, no. 3, pp. 1565-1585.
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Neshat, A, Pradhan, B & Javadi, S 2015, 'Risk assessment of groundwater pollution using Monte Carlo approach in an agricultural region: An example from Kerman Plain, Iran', Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, vol. 50, pp. 66-73.
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Ngo, NT, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Experimental investigation of coal-fouled ballast stabilised with geogrid', Australian Geomechanics Journal, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 105-112.
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This paper presents the results of an experimental study of coal-fouled ballast reinforced with geogrid, at various degrees of fouling and subjected to cyclic loading. A novel Track Process Simulation Testing Apparatus was used to realistically simulate fouled rail track conditions. The laboratory results demonstrated that coal fines acted as a lubricant, causing ballast aggregates to displace and rotate and, as a result, increase the deformation of ballast. However, coal fines also reduced ballast breakage somewhat because they fill the voids between the ballast particles and coat surface of ballast aggregates which reduce the inter-particle attrition. The placement of a geogrid at the interface between the ballast and sub-ballast layers provides extra internal confinement and interlocks the grains of ballast in its apertures, which also reduces ballast deformation. Based on laboratory results, a threshold value of VCI=40% is proposed to assist practitioners in conducting track maintenance as fouling beyond this threshold significantly reduces the reinforcement effect of geogrid so that fouled ballast experiences premature dilation leading to track instability. A novel equation incorporating the Void Contaminant Index and number of load cycles is also introduced to predict the deformation of fouled ballast, improve the design of rail tracks and help make the correct decisions with regards to track maintenance.

Ni, J, Indraratna, B, Geng, X-Y, Carter, JP & Chen, Y-L 2015, 'Model of Soft Soils under Cyclic Loading', International Journal of Geomechanics, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 04014067-04014067.
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Ni, W, Collings, IB, Lipman, J, Wang, X, Tao, M & Abolhasan, M 2015, 'GRAPH THEORY AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO FUTURE NETWORK PLANNING: SOFTWARE-DEFINED ONLINE SMALL CELL MANAGEMENT', IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 52-60.
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© 2015 IEEE. Network planning is facing new and critical challenges due to ad hoc deployment, unbalanced and drastically varying traffic demands, as well as limited backhaul and hardware resources in emerging small cell architectures. We discuss the application of graph theory to address the challenges. A clique-based software-defined online network management approach is proposed that captures traffic imbalance and fluctuation of small cells and optimally plans frequencies, infrastructures, and network structure at any instant. Its applications to three important small cell scenarios of cloud radio, point-to-point microwave backhaul, and interoperator spectrum sharing are demonstrated. Comparison studies show that in each of the scenarios, this new approach is able to significantly outperform conventional static offline network planning schemes in terms of throughput and satisfaction levels of small cells with regard to allocated bandwidths. Specifically, the throughput can be improved by 155 percent for the cloud radio scenario and 110.95 percent for the microwave backhaul scenario. The satisfaction level can be improved by 40 percent for interoperator spectrum sharing.

Ni, W, Collings, IB, Wang, X, Liu, RP, Kajan, A, Hedley, M & Abolhasan, M 2015, 'Radio Alignment for Inductive Charging of Electric Vehicles', IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL INFORMATICS, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 427-440.
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© 2005-2012 IEEE. To maximize power transfer for inductively charging electric vehicles (EVs), charger and battery coils must be aligned. Wireless sensors can be installed to estimate misalignments; however, existing ranging techniques cannot satisfy the precision requirements of the misalignment estimation. We propose a high-precision wireless ranging and misalignment estimation scheme, where high precision is achieved by iteratively measuring, estimating, and aligning the coils. Another key aspect is to convert the nonconvex misalignment estimation to a more tractable problem with a convex objective. We develop a conditional gradient descent method to solve the problem, which performs gradient descent (or conditional gradient descent on the boundary of the search space) and projects out-of-boundary points back into the space. Employing experimentally validated models, we show that our scheme can achieve 92% of the efficiency of perfectly aligned coils in 90% of operations, and tolerate correlated distance measurement errors. In contrast, the prior art is susceptible to correlation, undergoing a significant efficiency degradation of 18.5%.

Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'A statistical approach to estimate the Lyapunov spectrum in disc brake squeal', Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 334, pp. 120-135.
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Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'Nonlinear transient and chaotic interactions in disc brake squeal', Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 342, pp. 272-289.
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Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'Pad-mode-induced instantaneous mode instability for simple models of brake systems', Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, vol. 62-63, pp. 490-505.
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Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'Squeal noise in simple numerical brake models', JOURNAL OF SOUND AND VIBRATION, vol. 352, pp. 129-141.
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Oberst, S, Nava-Baro, E, Lai, JCS & Evans, TA 2015, 'An Innovative Signal Processing Method to Extract Ants’ Walking Signals', Acoustics Australia, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 87-96.
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Pathirage, U & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Assessment of optimum width and longevity of a permeable reactive barrier installed in an acid sulfate soil terrain', Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 999-1004.
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Removal of contaminants from groundwater using permeable reactive barriers (PRBs) is a cost-effective and popular engineering solution used throughout the world. Dissolved pollutants in groundwater are removed through geochemical processes that make PRBs effective for different types of contaminants. In achieving this, it is vital to determine the optimum width of the PRB to allow adequate residence time within the barrier and to establish its longevity. For this purpose, both field monitoring and geochemical modelling were conducted for a trial PRB located in the Shoalhaven Floodplain, south of Wollongong in Australia. In this study, the optimum PRB width is evaluated numerically, based on the neutralization effectiveness, i.e., when acidic groundwater travels through the alkaline PRB. A model developed previously has been extended considering the residence time, reaction kinetics, mineral precipitation–induced reduction in porosity and hydraulic conductivity, influent concentrations of the contaminants, and groundwater flow velocity. Longevity of the PRB is determined with respect to groundwater flow rates and amount of reactive material consumed.

Pradhan, B 2015, 'Geoinformation techniques in natural hazard modeling: Preface', Geoscience Frontiers, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 791-792.
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Pradhan, B 2015, 'Geoinformation techniques in natural hazard modeling: Preface', Geoscience, vol. 6, p. 001.

Pradhan, B, Sandeep, K, Mansor, S, Ramli, AR & Sharif, ARBM 2015, 'GIS terrain data compression using lifting scheme a new dimension'.

Praveena, SM, Pradhan, B & Ismail, SNS 2015, 'Spatial Assessment of Heavy Metals in Surface Soil from Klang District (Malaysia): An Example from a Tropical Environment', Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 1980-2003.
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Raghunandan, ME, Sharma, JS & Pradhan, B 2015, 'A review on the effect of rubber membrane in triaxial tests', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 3195-3206.
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Ross, PK & Blumenstein, M 2015, 'Cloud computing as a facilitator of SME entrepreneurship', Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 87-101.
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Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Analytical solution for radial consolidation considering soil structure characteristics', Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 52, no. 7, pp. 947-960.
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A system of surcharge load combined with vertical drains to speed up consolidation of soft soil by reducing the drainage path is one of the most efficient and economical ground improvement techniques. In the field, conventional theories including smear zone have been commonly employed to predict the radial consolidation behaviour induced by vertical drains in soft clay. One of the key parameters in conventional analysis is the use of mean coefficient of volume compressibility and soil permeability, which are often assumed to be constant. The effect of drain installation on the soil compressibility of the in situ clay structure is often ignored. Laboratory testing has shown that the soil compressibility and permeability can vary nonlinearly over a considerable range of applied surcharge pressure, and both these properties can be affected during the drain installation. This study presents a mathematical model of radial consolidation via vertical drains incorporating the variations of soil compressibility and permeability as well as highlighting the effects of drain installation on those parameters. The main differences between the proposed and conventional models are elucidated, in terms of stress history and preloading (surcharge) pressure. The effects of preconsolidation pressure and the magnitude of applied preloading are examined through the dissipation of average excess pore pressure and associated settlement. Supported by experimental observations, the proposed theory is validated with field data of a selected case study in the town of Ballina, New South Wales, Australia.

Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Briefing: Effect of drain installation patterns on rate of consolidation', Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Ground Improvement, vol. 168, no. 4, pp. 236-245.
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Prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) are employed to accelerate consolidation by decreasing the drainage path length. In the present study, using analytical solutions, an attempt was made to evaluate and quantify the effectiveness of two non-conventional PVD installation patterns, involving a parallel drain wall compared with a circular drain ring pattern, in contrast to conventional PVD installation (square or triangular patterns). The governing equations are based on the equal strain theory including the smear effect, and they provide a relative comparison between the two newly proposed installation patterns and the conventional square PVD grid, in terms of both the consolidation time and the equivalent drain spacing. The comparisons between the new and conventional installation patterns are made based on a single drain analysis and the density of PVDs per unit area.

Rujikiatkamjorn, C, Indraratna, B & Perera, D 2015, 'Alternative design approach for soft clay improved by PVDS', Australian Geomechanics Journal, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 137-144.
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In this paper the design procedures for multi-stage construction based on the research know-how described by Rujikiatkamjorn and Indraratna (2009) are proposed. The length of a vertical drain, anisotropic soil permeability and vacuum pressure are considered and a reduction in consolidation time through vacuum preloading is compared to other available methods. Design charts eliminating cumbersome iterative procedures are then developed using the equivalent drain diameter as an independent variable to obtain the relevant drain spacing. The design examples based on the land reclamation project at the Port of Brisbane for both single and multi-stage construction are also given.

Sharma, N, Shivakumara, P, Pal, U, Blumenstein, M & Tan, CL 2015, 'Piece-wise linearity based method for text frame classification in video', Pattern Recognition, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 862-881.
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Sun, W-J, Wei, Z-F, Sun, D-A, Liu, S-Q, Fatahi, B & Wang, X-Q 2015, 'Evaluation of the swelling characteristics of bentonite–sand mixtures', Engineering Geology, vol. 199, pp. 1-11.
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© 2015 Elsevier B.V. The swelling characteristic of bentonite-sand mixtures is an important index in evaluating the long term performance of the deep geological repository of nuclear waste. In this study the swelling characteristics of different types of bentonite-sand mixtures with various sand contents are compared. It is concluded that for pure bentonite and bentonite-sand mixtures with less sand than the critical sand content, the relationship between montmorillonite void ratio and vertical stress can be expressed as a unique line in a double logarithmic plot, and volumetric strain under a given vertical stress and swelling pressure at a constant volume after full saturation can be predicted based on this line; however, for mixtures with more sand than the critical sand content, the above relationship deviates from the line when the stress is larger than the starting deviation stress, which can be determined using the sand skeleton void ratio. Before the sand skeleton forms, the vertical stress is borne mainly by montmorillonite particles and the amount of swelling at full saturation is determined by the content of montmorillonite per unit volume, however, after the sand skeleton forms the vertical stress is borne by both the montmorillonite and the sand skeleton. The stress distribution coefficient is proposed to present a proportion of the vertical stress that is borne by both parts. A predictive method, verified by the swelling tests on bentonite-sand mixtures with various sand contents, is suggested to predict the amount of swelling due to saturation in the full range of sand content.

Tabatabaiefar, HR, Fatahi, B, Ghabraie, K & Zhou, W-H 2015, 'Evaluation of numerical procedures to determine seismic response of structures under influence of soil-structure interaction', Structural Engineering and Mechanics, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 27-47.
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Copyright © 2015 Techno-Press, Ltd. In this study, the accuracy and reliability of fully nonlinear method against equivalent linear method for dynamic analysis of soil-structure interaction is investigated comparing the predicted results of both numerical procedures with the results of experimental shaking table tests. An enhanced numerical soil-structure model has been developed which treats the behaviour of the soil and the structure with equal rigour. The soil-structural model comprises a 15 storey structural model resting on a soft soil inside a laminar soil container. The structural model was analysed under three different conditions: (i) fixed base model performing conventional time history dynamic analysis, (ii) flexible base model (considering full soil-structure interaction) conducting equivalent linear dynamic analysis, and (iii) flexible base model performing fully nonlinear dynamic analysis. The results of the above mentioned three cases in terms of lateral storey deflections and inter-storey drifts are determined and compared with the experimental results of shaking table tests. Comparing the experimental results with the numerical analysis predictions, it is noted that equivalent linear method of dynamic analysis underestimates the inelastic seismic response of mid-rise moment resisting building frames resting on soft soils in comparison to the fully nonlinear dynamic analysis method. Thus, inelastic design procedure, using equivalent linear method, cannot adequately guarantee the structural safety for mid-rise building frames resting on soft soils. However, results obtained from the fully nonlinear method of analysis fit the experimental results reasonably well. Therefore, this method is recommended to be used by practicing engineers.

Tang, KKW & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Converting Digital Number into Bathymetric Depth: a Case Study over Coastal and Shallow Water of Langkawi Island, Malaysia', FIG Working Week 2015, From the Wisdom of the Ages to the Challenges of the Modern World.

Tasalloti, SMA, Indraratna, B, Rujikiatkamjorn, C, Heitor, A & Chiaro, G 2015, 'A Laboratory Study on the Shear Behavior of Mixtures of Coal Wash and Steel Furnace Slag as Potential Structural Fill', Geotechnical Testing Journal, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 20140047-20140047.
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Tehrany, MS, Pradhan, B & Jebur, MN 2015, 'Flood susceptibility analysis and its verification using a novel ensemble support vector machine and frequency ratio method', Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 1149-1165.
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Tehrany, MS, Pradhan, B, Mansor, S & Ahmad, N 2015, 'Flood susceptibility assessment using GIS-based support vector machine model with different kernel types', CATENA, vol. 125, pp. 91-101.
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Tennakoon, N, Indraratna, B, Nimbalkar, S & Sloan, SW 2015, 'Application of bounding surface plasticity concept for clay-fouled ballast under drained loading', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 70, pp. 96-105.
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Tien Bui, D, Tran, CT, Pradhan, B, Revhaug, I & Seidu, R 2015, 'iGeoTrans – a novel iOS application for GPS positioning in geosciences', Geocarto International, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 1-16.
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Tien Bui, D, Tran, CT, Pradhan, B, Revhaug, I & Seidu, R 2015, 'iGeoTrans–a novel iOS application for GPS positioning in geosciences', Geocarto International, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 202-217.

Walker, RTR & Indraratna, B 2015, 'Application of spectral Galerkin method for multilayer consolidation of soft soils stabilised by vertical drains or stone columns', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 69, pp. 529-539.
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Yang, C, Sheng, D, Carter, JP & Sloan, SW 2015, 'Modelling the plastic anisotropy of Lower Cromer Till', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 69, pp. 22-37.
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Yang, Z-Y, Pourghasemi, HR, Pradhan, B, Chen, T-C & Lee, Y-H 2015, 'An index to describe the earthquake effect on subsequent landslides in Central Taiwan', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 3139-3147.
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Yao, K, Idrees, MO, Pradhan, B & Nabeel, SM 2015, 'Detecting Land Use Land Cover Change Impacted by Civil Crisis in Ivory Coast using Remote Sensing and GIS', Asian J Appl Sci, vol. 3, no. 05.

Youssef, AM, Al-Kathery, M & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Assessment of impact of mass movements on the upper Tayyah valley's bridge along Shear escarpment highway, Asir region (Saudi Arabia) using remote sensing data and field investigation', Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 497-533.

Youssef, AM, Al-Kathery, M & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Landslide susceptibility mapping at Al-Hasher area, Jizan (Saudi Arabia) using GIS-based frequency ratio and index of entropy models', Geosciences Journal, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 113-134.
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Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B & Al-Harthi, SG 2015, 'Assessment of rock slope stability and structurally controlled failures along Samma escarpment road, Asir Region (Saudi Arabia)', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 9, pp. 6835-6852.
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Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B & Sefry, SA 2015, 'Remote sensing-based studies coupled with field data reveal urgent solutions to avert the risk of flash floods in the Wadi Qus (east of Jeddah) Kingdom of Saudi Arabia', Natural Hazards, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 1465-1488.
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Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B, Al-Kathery, M, Bathrellos, GD & Skilodimou, HD 2015, 'Assessment of rockfall hazard at Al-Noor Mountain, Makkah city (Saudi Arabia) using spatio-temporal remote sensing data and field investigation', Journal of African Earth Sciences, vol. 101, pp. 309-321.
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Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B, Jebur, MN & El-Harbi, HM 2015, 'Landslide susceptibility mapping using ensemble bivariate and multivariate statistical models in Fayfa area, Saudi Arabia', Environmental Earth Sciences, vol. 73, no. 7, pp. 3745-3761.
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Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B, Pourghasemi, HR & Abdullahi, S 2015, 'Landslide susceptibility assessment at Wadi Jawrah Basin, Jizan region, Saudi Arabia using two bivariate models in GIS', Geosciences Journal, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 449-469.
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Youssef, AM, Pradhan, B, Sefry, SA & Abdullah, MMA 2015, 'Use of geological and geomorphological parameters in potential suitability assessment for urban planning development at Wadi Al-Asla basin, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 8, pp. 5617-5630.
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Yu, Y, Li, Y & Li, J 2015, 'Forecasting hysteresis behaviours of magnetorheological elastomer base isolator utilizing a hybrid model based on support vector regression and improved particle swarm optimization', SMART MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 1-15.
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© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. Due to its inherent hysteretic characteristics, the main challenge for the application of a magnetorheological elastomer- (MRE) based isolator is the exploitation of the accurate model, which could fully describe its unique behaviour. This paper proposes a nonparametric model for a MRE-based isolator based on support vector regression (SVR). The trained identification model is to forecast the shear force of the MRE-based isolator online; thus, the dynamic response from the MRE-based isolator can be well captured. In order to improve the forecast capacity of the model, a type of improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) is employed to optimize the parameters in SVR. Eventually, the trained model is applied to the MRE-based isolator modelling with testing data. The results indicate that the proposed hybrid model has a better generalization capacity and better recognition accuracy than other conventional models, and it is an effective and suitable approach for forecasting the behaviours of a MRE-based isolator.

Yu, Y, Li, Y & Li, J 2015, 'Nonparametric modeling of magnetorheological elastomer base isolator based on artificial neural network optimized by ant colony algorithm', Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, vol. 26, no. 14, pp. 1789-1798.
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Laminated magnetorheological elastomer base isolator is regarded as one of the most promising candidates for realizing adaptive base isolation for civil structures. However, the intrinsic hysteretic and nonlinear behavior of magnetorheological elastomer base isolators imposes challenge for adopting the device to accomplish high-accuracy performance in structural control. Therefore, it is essential to develop an accurate model for symbolizing this unique characteristic before designing a feedback controller. So far, some classical parametric models, such as Bouc–Wen, Dahl, and LuGre, have been proposed to depict the hysteretic response of magnetorheological devices, that is, magnetorheological damper, which may also be used for describing the nonlinear behavior of magnetorheological elastomer base isolator. However, the parameter identification is difficult to implement due to the nonlinear differential equations existing in these models. Considering this problem, this article proposes a nonparametric model, that is, an artificial neural network–based model with 3 input neurons, 18 hidden neurons, and 1 output neuron, to predict the magnetorheological elastomer isolator behavior. In this model, the ant colony algorithm is employed for model training to obtain the optimal weights based on the force–displacement/velocity data sampled from the magnetorheological elastomer isolator. Finally, experimental data are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed artificial neural network–based model with the good forecasting results.

Yu, Y, Li, Y & Li, J 2015, 'Parameter identification and sensitivity analysis of an improved LuGre friction model for magnetorheological elastomer base isolator', Meccanica, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 2691-2707.
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© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. The recently-developed magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) base isolator can provide an instant change in the shear modulus and damping property under applied magnetic field, which makes it as an ideal device for the semi-active control in buildings and bridges. Previous studies show that this new device is featured with its nonlinear and hysteretic responses, and it is necessary to sufficiently understand its behaviour when adopting this device in control system. Although there are several models presented to predict the hysteresis of MRE base isolator, they are always suffered from some application limitations, e.g. high computation demand or complex model. To better interpret this complicated feature of the device, this work presents an improved LuGre friction model, which has been successfully used in modelling other magnetorheological device i.e. MR damper. In addition, an improved fruit fly optimization algorithm (IFFOA) is also proposed to identify the model parameters. In the improved algorithm, a transfer factor based on a self-adaptive step is added together with a three-dimensional searching space. This improvement can enhance the convergence rate of the algorithm and avoid the local optimum. Furthermore, to reduce the complexity of the model, the local and global parameter sensitivity analyses are conducted for model simplification. Eventually, the experimental measurements of device displacement, velocity and shear force are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed model and IFFOA.

Yu, Y, Li, Y & Li, J 2015, 'Parameter identification of a novel strain stiffening model for magnetorheological elastomer base isolator utilizing enhanced particle swarm optimization', Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, vol. 26, no. 18, pp. 2446-2462.
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This article presents a novel model to describe the nonlinear relationships between shear force and displacement/velocity in a magnetorheological elastomer base isolator. The proposed model, containing a strain stiffening element, is able to portray the distinct dynamic behaviors of magnetorheological elastomer base isolator. To identify the model parameters, an enhanced particle swarm optimization is used on force–displacement/velocity data sampled under different loading conditions. In this algorithm, a self-adaptive inertia weight replaces the general linear weight, enhancing the convergence rate of iteration process. Besides, the mutation operator in genetic algorithm is adopted for finding global optimum. Testing data of the device displacement, velocity and force from magnetorheological elastomer base isolator are utilized to validate the proposed model and corresponding parameter identification algorithm.

Yusof, NM, Pradhan, B, Shafri, HZM, Jebur, MN & Yusoff, Z 2015, 'Spatial landslide hazard assessment along the Jelapang Corridor of the North-South Expressway in Malaysia using high resolution airborne LiDAR data', Arabian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. 9789-9800.
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Yusoff, S, Pradhan, B, Manap, MA & Shafri, HZM 2015, 'Regional gold potential mapping in Kelantan (Malaysia) using probabilistic based models and GIS', Open Geosciences, vol. 7, no. 1.
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Abstract The aim of this study is to test and compare twoprobabilistic based models (frequency ratio and weightsof-evidence) with regard to regional gold potential mappingat Kelantan, Malaysia. Until now these models havenot been used for the purpose of mapping gold potentialareas in Malaysia. This study analyzed the spatial relationshipbetween gold deposits and geological factors such aslithology, faults, geochemical and geophysical data in geographicalinformation system (GIS) software. About eight(8) gold deposits and five (5) related factors are identifiedand quantified for their spatial relationships. Then, all factorswere combined to generate a predictive gold potentialmap. The predictive maps were then validated by comparingthem with known gold deposits using receiver operatingcharacteristics (ROC) and “area under the curve”(AUC) graphs. The results of validation showed accuraciesof 80% for the frequency ratio and 74% for the weightsof-evidence model, respectively. The results demonstratedthe usefulness of frequency ratio and weights-of-evidencemodeling techniques in mineral exploration work to discoverunknown gold deposits in Kelantan, Malaysia.

Zhang, S, Tong, C-X, Li, X & Sheng, D 2015, 'A new method for studying the evolution of particle breakage', Géotechnique, vol. 65, no. 11, pp. 911-922.
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This paper proposes a simple method for studying the evolution of particle breakage. A two-parameter statistical model is first proposed to describe the distribution of new particles generated from breakage of an initially uniformly graded sample. A Markov chain model is then proposed to describe the particle size evolution of non-uniformly graded samples. The two-parameter statistical model is shown to be able to capture different breakage patterns such as asperity breakage and particle splitting observed during breakage of uniformly graded samples. In the Markov chain model, it is shown that the concept of ‘effective breakage probability’, proposed to define the relative breakage extent of the whole sample, is comparable to a well-established breakage index in the literature. Both models are successfully validated against experimental data, where the characteristics of the model parameters and the engineering implications are discussed.

Zhang, X, Krabbenhoft, K, Sheng, D & Li, W 2015, 'Numerical simulation of a flow-like landslide using the particle finite element method', Computational Mechanics, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 167-177.
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Zhang, X, Sheng, D, Kouretzis, GP, Krabbenhoft, K & Sloan, SW 2015, 'Numerical investigation of the cylinder movement in granular matter', Physical Review E, vol. 91, no. 2.
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Zhao, M & Ji, JC 2015, 'Nonlinear torsional vibrations of a wind turbine gearbox', APPLIED MATHEMATICAL MODELLING, vol. 39, no. 16, pp. 4928-4950.
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Zhou, A & Sheng, D 2015, 'An advanced hydro-mechanical constitutive model for unsaturated soils with different initial densities', Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 63, pp. 46-66.
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Zhou, J, Sun, J, Chen, F, Wang, Y, Taib, R, Khawaji, A & Li, Z 2015, 'Measurable Decision Making with GSR and Pupillary Analysis for Intelligent User Interface', ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, vol. 21, no. 6, pp. 1-23.
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This article presents a framework of adaptive, measurable decision making for Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) by varying decision factors in their types, numbers, and values. Under this framework, decision making is measured using physiological sensors such as Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and eye-tracking while users are subjected to varying decision quality and difficulty levels. Following this quantifiable decision making, users are allowed to refine several decision factors in order to make decisions of high quality and with low difficulty levels. A case study of driving route selection is used to set up an experiment to test our hypotheses. In this study, GSR features exhibit the best performance in indexing decision quality. These results can be used to guide the design of intelligent user interfaces for decision-related applications in HCI that can adapt to user behavior and decision-making performance.

Adak, C, Maitra, P, Chaudhuri, BB & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Binarization of old halftone text documents', TENCON 2015 - 2015 IEEE Region 10 Conference, TENCON 2015 - 2015 IEEE Region 10 Conference, IEEE, Macao, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 1-5.
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© 2015 IEEE. A degraded document image should be cleaned before subjecting to Optical Character Recognition (OCR), otherwise the result may be erroneous. Though major studies have been conducted on degraded document image cleaning, halftone documents received less attention. Since halftone documents contain halftone dot patterns, classical binarization techniques do not produce proper output for feeding into the OCR engine. In this paper, old halftone documents are considered for text area cleaning and binarization. At the beginning, the zone of interest (text area) is found using local binary pattern and contour analysis. Reasonably smaller zones are filtered out as noise. Then the foreground pixels are separated using background estimation. After this, an automated spatial smoothing technique is employed on the foreground. At last, a local binarization technique is used to produce the binary image. The proposed method is tested on various old and degraded halftone documents, which has produced fairly good results.

Alamdari, MM, Khoa, NLD, Runcie, P, Mustapha, S, Dackermann, U, Li, J, Nguyen, VV & Gu, X 1970, 'Application of unsupervised support vector machine for condition assessment of concrete structures', Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Performance-based and Life-cycle Structural Engineering (PLSE 2015), International Conference on Performance-based and Life-cycle Structural Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland.
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Ali Tasalloti, SM, Indraratna, B, Chiaro, G & Heitor, A 1970, 'Field Investigation on Compaction and Strength Performance of Two Coal Wash-BOS Slag Mixtures', IFCEE 2015, IFCEE 2015, American Society of Civil Engineers, pp. 2359-2368.
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© ASCE 2015. The effective reuse and recycling of industrial byproducts, namely coal wash (CW) and basic oxygen steel slag (BOS), through large-scale geotechnical projects (e.g. land and port reclamation) is economically beneficial and environmentally sustainable. Nevertheless, due to the heterogeneity of these granular waste materials, the actual performance of compacted fill in the field can be significantly different from that observed in the laboratory. This paper reports the results of a compaction field trial carried out at Port Kembla Outer Harbor reclamation site (Wollongong, Australia) to evaluate the in situ performance of two selected CW-BOS blends. Based on a number of field density tests, it was found that 4 passes of compaction were adequate for achieving a fill density > 90% standard Proctor compaction. A series of dynamic cone penetration tests (DCPTs) confirmed that compacted CW-BOS fills have a greater strength compared to compacted sandy fill, as the number of blows to penetrate 100 mm is greater than 20 for both materials. Furthermore, plate load tests were also performed and swelling was routinely monitored. The results are presented and discussed.

Amini, N, Aydos, C, Wijayaratna, K, Grzybowska, H & Waller, T 1970, 'A network wide evaluation of the SCATS ramp metering system using microsimulation', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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© 2015 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. During the last century, there has been considerable economic growth and development of cities around the world. The growth has led to an expansion of car-ownership and ultimately increased congestion of the road network. Traffic engineers and transport planners have attempted to mitigate the consequences of congestion of motorways and freeways using a number of techniques. One of which has been Ramp Metering, that regulates the flow of traffic entering the motorway in order to improve mainline flow and minimise congestion. Many ramp metering algorithms have been developed based on a variety of strategies. The more advanced algorithms allow coordination between a series of subsequent on-ramps to improve the performance of the network holistically. One of the leading ramp metering solutions is the SCATS Ramp Metering System (SRMS). This study evaluates the effectiveness of the SRMS using state-of-the-art microsimulation modelling. SRMS is implemented in AIMSUN using the SCATSIM interface applied to a freeway stretch of over 25km with seventeen on-ramps,. Arterial roads parallel to the freeway are included in the study to account for the route diversion effects due to on-ramp delays. The calibration of the coordinated ramp meters was conducted in conjunction with RMS and a number of different demand conditions were modelled to understand the sensitivity of ramp metering. The study considers a series of key performance metrics discussed within the literature and highlights the strengths and limitations of the microsimulation modelling paradigm.

Amini, N, Aydos, C, Wijayaratna, K, Grzybowska, H & Waller, T 1970, 'A network wide evaluation of the SCATS ramp metering system using microsimulation', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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During the last century, there has been considerable economic growth and development of cities around the world. The growth has led to an expansion of car-ownership and ultimately increased congestion of the road network. Traffic engineers and transport planners have attempted to mitigate the consequences of congestion of motorways and freeways using a number of techniques. One of which has been Ramp Metering, that regulates the flow of traffic entering the motorway in order to improve mainline flow and minimise congestion. Many ramp metering algorithms have been developed based on a variety of strategies. The more advanced algorithms allow coordination between a series of subsequent on-ramps to improve the performance of the network holistically. One of the leading ramp metering solutions is the SCATS Ramp Metering System (SRMS). This study evaluates the effectiveness of the SRMS using state-of-the-art microsimulation modelling. SRMS is implemented in AIMSUN using the SCATSIM interface applied to a freeway stretch of over 25km with seventeen on-ramps,. Arterial roads parallel to the freeway are included in the study to account for the route diversion effects due to on-ramp delays. The calibration of the coordinated ramp meters was conducted in conjunction with RMS and a number of different demand conditions were modelled to understand the sensitivity of ramp metering. The study considers a series of key performance metrics discussed within the literature and highlights the strengths and limitations of the microsimulation modelling paradigm.

Amini, N, Grzybowska, H, Wijayaratna, K & Waller, ST 1970, 'Systemic Evaluation of the HERO-Based Ramp Metering Algorithm Using Microsimulation: Demonstration Analysis Using a Sydney Motorway', 2015 IEEE 18th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2015 IEEE 18th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems - (ITSC 2015), IEEE, SPAIN, pp. 2287-2292.
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Arshad, S, Wang, Y & Chen, F 1970, 'Interactive Mouse Stream as Real-Time Indicator of User's Cognitive Load', Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '15: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, pp. 1025-1030.
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User interaction and multimodal behaviour have been argued as viable indicators of cognitive load. We extend this idea by exploring interactive mouse data stream and implementing sliding windows technique to detect cognitive load variation in real-time. This work-in-progress reports successful load change detections resulting from applying our unique algorithm to data streams of mouse interactivity features from twenty seven subjects. Unique contribution here includes learning from mouse interactive stream and a sliding window technique for cognitive load detection in real-time. This technique is currently being enhanced to process learning from multimodal user interaction streams. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

Arshad, SZ, Zhou, J, Bridon, C, Chen, F & Wang, Y 1970, 'Investigating User Confidence for Uncertainty Presentation in Predictive Decision Making', Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction, OzCHI '15: The Annual Meeting of the Australian Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction, ACM, pp. 352-360.
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Machine Learning (ML) based decision support systems are often like a black box to non-expert users. Here user's confidence becomes critical for effective decision making and maintaining trust in the system. We find that user confidence varies significantly depending on supplementary material presented on screen. We investigate change in user confidence (in the context of ML based decision making) by varying level of uncertainty presented (in an online water-pipe failure prediction case study) and find that all 26 subjects rated higher uncertainty task to be most difficult and had lowest user confidence in predictive decisions of the same. This agrees with our expectation that increased uncertainty would reduce user confidence in predictive decision making. However, ML-researchers subgroup reported being most confident when uncertainty with known probability was presented, whereas other subgroups (viz. general staff and non-ML researchers) appeared most confident when uncertainty was not at all presented. This is an original research to improve understanding of user's decision making confidence with respect to uncertainty presented in machine learning context.

Basack, S, Siahaan, F, Indraratna, B & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 1970, 'Influence of Clogging on the Performance of Stone Column Improved Soft Ground', FROM FUNDAMENTALS TO APPLICATIONS IN GEOTECHNICS, 15th Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (PCSMGE) / 8th South American Congress on Rock Mechanics (SCRM), IOS PRESS, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, pp. 1615-1622.
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Biabani, MM, Indraratna, B & Nimbalkar, S 1970, 'Behaviour of geocell reinforced sub-ballast under cyclic loading', FROM FUNDAMENTALS TO APPLICATIONS IN GEOTECHNICS, 15th Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (PCSMGE) / 8th South American Congress on Rock Mechanics (SCRM), IOS PRESS, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, pp. 109-119.
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Connor, M, Ghapanchi, AH, Blumenstein, M, Amrollahi, A & Najaftorkaman, M 1970, 'Decision Support Systems and Line Performance: Case of Gold Coast University Hospital.', Stud Health Technol Inform, National Health Informatics Conference, IOS Press, Netherlands, pp. 22-28.
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Computer-based decision support information systems have been promoted for their potential to improve physician performance and patient outcomes and support clinical decision making. The current case study reported design and implementation of a high-level decision support system (DSS) which facilitated the flow of data from operational level to top managers and leadership level of hospitals. The results shows that development of a DSS improve data connectivity, timing, and responsiveness issues via centralised sourcing and storing of principal health-related information in the hospital. The implementation of the system has resulted in significant enhancements in outpatient waiting times management.

Dackermann, U, Yu, Y, Li, J, Niederleithinger, E & Wiggenhauser, H 1970, 'A new non-destructive testing system based on narrow-band frequency excitation for the condition assessment of pole structures using frequency response functions and principle component analysis', Website Proceedings (NDTnet) of International Symposium on Non-Destructive Testing in Civil Engineering, International Symposium on Non-Destructive Testing in Civil Engineering (NDT-CE), Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und –prüfung (BAM), Berlin, Germany, pp. 666-669.
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This work proposes a new narrow-band frequency excitation-based non-destructive testing (NDT) system combined with advanced signal processing technique for damage identification of timber and concrete poles. Compared to traditional hammer impact testing with broad-band frequency wave excitation, this new system adopts tactile transducers to generate controllable stress waves with narrowband frequency, avoiding multi-mode wave excitation of traditional methods. In the proposed NDT method, frequency response functions (FRFs) and principle component analysis (PCA) are used to extract signal features in captured single-mode stress waves for condition assessment. To validate the performance of the proposed system and to assess the effectiveness of the advanced signal processing methods, four different timber poles and five concrete poles with various health states and damage types are employed for NDT testing and assessment. The results show that for the tested poles, the proposed method is able to achieve condition assessment accuracies of as high as 89% for timber poles and 93% for concrete poles. Keywords Non-destructive testing, timber and concrete pole, narrow-band frequency excitation, tactile transducer, frequency response functions, principle component analysis, advanced signal processing

Dang, L., Hasan, H., Fatahi, B., Jones, R. & Khabbaz, H. 1970, 'Effects of Bagasse Ash and Hydrated Lime Addition on Engineering Properties of Expansive Soil', GEOMATE 2015, GEOMATE 2015, The GEOMATE International Society, Osaka, Japan.

Dasa, A, Palb, U, Ferrerc, MA & Blumensteina, M 1970, 'SSBC 2015: Sclera segmentation benchmarking competition', 2015 IEEE 7th International Conference on Biometrics Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), 2015 IEEE 7th International Conference on Biometrics Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), IEEE.
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Fatahi, B & Khabbaz, H 1970, 'Research-based computer games to train civil engineering students to be lifelong learners', Proceedings of the 43rd SEFI Annual Conference 2015 - Diversity in Engineering Education: An Opportunity to Face the New Trends of Engineering, SEFI 2015, SEFI - Annual Conference of European Society for Engineering Education, SEFI, Orléans, France, pp. 56389-1-56389-8.
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In spite of vast efforts to adopt available information technology in higher education teaching and learning, the truth is that most of university students and academic staff make only limited use of communication technology. Selwyne [1] concluded that there is a growing need for the education community to account for the distinct ?digital disconnect? between the enthusiastic rhetoric and rather more mundane reality of university information and communication technology use. Recent advances in computer science and multimedia as well as optimistic effects of multifaceted modes of education on student learning, have encouraged teachers to look at adopting the new technology to improve students? learning experience. Chang et al. [2] have suggested that digital games can be powerful informal learning environments encouraging active and critical learning, supplementing traditional teaching methods. It is well accepted that well designed discipline based computer games can help with student learning process and experience in higher education. In this study, a computer game called ?Back to Bedrock? has been developed for soil Behaviour subject at undergraduate level and students? learning process has been monitored and evaluated. It was aimed to help Civil Engineering students with information collection methods, creative thinking, problem solving, and lifelong learning abilities, through a research-based computer game. The results of this project indicate that implementing innovative methods such as computer game based assignments can provide enjoyable competitive and cooperative learning environment enhancing students? learning motivation, and critical thinking abilities, improving the overall performance of students in the subject.

Fatahi, B, Khabbaz, H & Ho, L 1970, 'Debate Activity as an Effective Interactive Learning Approach for Civil Engineering Students', 26th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE 2015), AAEE - Annual Conference of Australasian Association for Engineering Education, Deakin University Press, Geelong, Australia, pp. 980-990.
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The research team has attempted to improve the learning experience of Civil Engineering students by introducing debate activities in engineering subjects. This could encourage the students to be active learners (against passive learner or lecture receivers) and we consider this process as an activity (what students actually do) and not a task (the work prescribed by the teacher). In this project, a main stream civil engineering subject, namely Soil Behaviour has been targeted. Feedback received from the students has indicated that the developed in-class debate activity has been effective in improving communication and critical-thinking skills of students. Availability of new collaborative theatres and collaborative learning spaces could add great advantages to enhancing the efficiency of collaborative group work, in terms of planning and preparation for the debates. In addition, available online discussion boards and online subject website would provide flexibility for students to access digital resources and prepare their arguments. The professional training sessions, on the other hand, could equip participants with important tips to improve the argument presentation skills while were trained to overcome the panic and fear of making mistakes during the speech. International students, whose English is not their first language, were particularly encouraged to attend the training sessions helping them to obtain profound presentation skills not only for Soil Behaviour debate but also for their future career.

Fatahi, B, Khabbaz, H & Valipour, H 1970, 'Application of research-inspired assessment to enhance students learning in civil engineering', Proceedings of the 43rd SEFI Annual Conference 2015 - Diversity in Engineering Education: An Opportunity to Face the New Trends of Engineering, SEFI 2015, SEFI - Annual Conference of European Society for Engineering Education, SEFI, Orléans, France, pp. 56388-1-56388-8.
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The relationship between teaching and research has become a highly challenging issue due to evidence of synergy between them and complexity of integrating them. As reported by Locke [1], the separation of research and teaching could be the result of policy and operational decisions to distinguish the way these activities are funded, managed, assessed and rewarded. However, this would not necessarily excuse higher education institutions from a commitment to optimise the beneficial relations between teaching and research. For example, research conducted by Posch and Steiner [2] at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich on innovation for sustainability, concludes that appropriate integration of research and teaching activities leads to mutual benefits for both higher education institutions and students. In this study an approach introducing research activities in Civil Engineering subjects to enable students to develop skills within critical and creative thinking and being lifelong learners has been developed and evaluated. Research based activities/assessments in two major Civil Engineering subjects at undergraduate level have been introduced, and students? learning process has been monitored and evaluated. The results of this project indicate that by incorporating research components in subjects, research-based learning culture among Civil Engineering students were developed. This clearly gave more satisfaction to the students about the learning experience. Statistical analysis of results indicated that students with better performance in mini-projects performed better in the final exam, which was a totally independent assessment task. In addition, the averaged final exam mark of students with good quality projects was higher than the one for other students.

Fazel, SAA, Mirfenderesk, H, Tomlinson, R & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Towards robust flood forecasts using neural networks', 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), IEEE, Killarney, Ireland.
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© 2015 IEEE. In this paper, design of a neural network for a domain-specific problem is described. The problem of concern is forecasting flood events where data is contaminated heavily by noise, training examples have different importance levels and noisy data coincides with the most important ones. To this end, two ideas are explored namely, changing the loss function and integrating a coefficient that reflects on the relative importance of training examples. To this end, backpropagation is re-derived considering implication of having a more general objective function. Independently, inclusion of scores associated with each training examples and its implication of overall loss function and the way weights are optimized is explored. The derived model is implemented in MATLAB and flood data from Talebudgera, Australia is considered for investigations. Compared to the base case being backpropagation, the results suggest that inclusion of scored for training examples corresponds to visible improvement when predicting peaks.

Ghanavati, M, Wong, RK, Chen, F & Wang, Y 1970, 'A Generic Ranking Service on Scientific Datasets', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), IEEE, New York City, NY, pp. 491-498.
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Ghanbarzadeh, R, Ghapanchi, AH & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Characteristics of Research on the Application of Three-Dimensional Immersive Virtual Worlds in Health', Health Information Science (LNCS), International Conference on Health Information Science (HIS), Springer International Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 213-224.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Three-dimensional immersive virtual worlds (3DVW) offer researchers and health professionals the opportunities to experiment with their rich communication, collaboration, virtual and 3D content creation integrated tools. This study presents the results of a systematic literature review conducted on the adoption of 3DVWs in the health care sector. Our systematic review began with an initial set of 1088 studies from five major and top-ranking scientific databases published from 1990 to 2013 which have used 3DVWs in health. We found a large quantity of application areas for the 3DVWs in health care, and classified them into two main categories: educational and non-educational applications. We also analyzed different 3DVW platforms and virtual environments which have been used in health care, as well as the avatar-mediated roles these applications, and frequency of papers in different countries. Our findings can be very insightful for the health care community and researchers.

Ghosh, B, Fatahi, B, Kamruzzaman, AHM & Khabbaz, H 1970, 'Assessing load transfer mechanism in CMC-supported embankments adopting Timoshenko beam theory', Geotechnical Engineering for Infrastructure and Development - Proceedings of the XVI European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, ECSMGE 2015, XVI European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Ice Virtual Library, Edinburgh, Scotland, pp. 577-582.
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Controlled modulus columns (CMC) supported embankments are increasingly being used for construction of major highway embankments on expansive soils particularly near waterways or coastal regions. CMC is a faster, sustainable and economical ground improvement technology that stiffens the poor soil and transmits the load from the traffic to a lower bearing stratum. The key influencing elements of the load transfer mechanism include embankment fill, load transfer platform (LTP), CMC and the underlying soils. Use of LTP enhances the load distribution mechanism in the CMC improved soft ground and minimises the post construction settlement of the ground. In this paper, reinforced Timoshenko beam theory is introduced to simulate the LTP with one layer of geosynthetics resting on CMC improved soft soil. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the importance of the height of the embankment on the maximum settlement of the LTP, tension developed in the geosynthetics and stress concentration ratio (the ratio of the stresses acting on CMC and soft soils) for the CMC supported embankments. Special attention is given to the stiffness of soft soil and shear stiffness of the geosynthetic layer. It has been observed that height of the embankment, the stiffness of the soft soil and the shear stiffness of the geosynthetics significantly influence the maximum settlement of the LTP and the stress concentration ratio.

He, X & Liang, D 1970, 'SPH study of rapid landslides of cut slopes', Proceedings of the International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference, pp. 727-734.
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More and more natural slopes are reshaped into cut slopes nowadays and these slopes are prone to landslides. To properly use the land near cut slopes, a method to evaluate the travel distance of cut slope landslides is necessary. This paper firstly reports on the use of SPH method for the simulation of the Fei Tsui landslide, Hong Kong. Then, the influence of geometry of cut slopes is investigated. It is concluded that the soil friction and pore pressure parameters are important in the evaluation of the landslide travel distance. For landslide deposit residing completely at the toe, the volume, slope angle and source angle are important factors for the prediction of travel distance. Conversely, the landslide height and the shape of the landslide mass are insignificant. For landslide deposit residing partially on the slip surface, the detailed shape of slip surface is also important.

Ho, L, Fatahi, B & Khabbaz 1970, 'Exact analytical solution for one-dimensional consolidation of unsaturated soil stratum subjected to damped sine wave loading', Proceedings of 12th Australia New Zealand Conference on Geomechanics, 12th Australia New Zealand Conference on Geomechanics, Wellington, New Zealand, pp. 1-8.
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A considerable surcharge exerted on an unsaturated soil stratum leads to the emergence of excess pore pressures. During the consolidation process, these pressures tend to dissipate towards permeable boundary surfaces, resulting in a reduction of the soil volume. Such phenomenon can be mathematically described by inhomogeneous governing equations of flow based on Fick’s law (with respect to air phase) and Darcy’s law (with respect to water phase). This paper discusses the dissipation of excess pore-air and pore-water pressures and settlement of an unsaturated soil stratum subjected to an external damped sine wave loading. An analytical solution is derived from the governing equations of flow using eigenfunction expansion and Laplace transformation methods. Eigenfunctions and eigenvalues are parts of the general solution and can be obtained based on oneway drainage boundary condition. On the other hand, the damped sine wave loading is mathematically simulated and incorporated in the solution. Once the time variable (t) in partial differential equations is transformed into the Laplace complex argument (s), generalised Fourier coefficients can be computed by taking a Laplace inverse, and then the final solution can be obtained. In this study, the air to water permeability ratio (k /k ), influencing changes in dissipation rates of excess pore pressures and settlement are investigated and discussed. It is observed that the increasing permeability ratio has a significant effect on the change in the pore pressures.

Hong, H, Biswajeet, P, Bui, DT & Xu, C 1970, 'Landslide susceptibility assessment at the Suichuan area (China) using support vector machine model', Emerging Economies, Risk and Development, and Intelligent Technology - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, RACR 2015, CRC Press, pp. 333-340.
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Landslide is a disastrous hazard around the world and landslide susceptibility is very important and useful in land use planning and government management. The aim of the present study was to apply Support Vector Machine (SVM) model with four kernel function named polynomial, RBF, sigmoid, and linear to verify the accuracy of each other. In conclusion, this paper provides a case study of landslide susceptibility assessment using SVM model that the polynomial function with high degree is the most suitable.

Indraratna, B, Balasubramaniam, A, Poulos, H, Rujikiatkamjorn, C, Ameratunga, J & Anuradha Perera, MDA 1970, 'Monitoring of consolidation behaviour of marine clay treated with vacuum and surcharge at the Port of Brisbane', Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics, Ninth International Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth.
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Indraratna, B, Navaratnarajah, S, Nimbalkar, S, Rujikiatkamjorn, C & Neville, T 1970, 'Performance monitoring — case studies of tracks stabilised by geosynthetic grids and prefabricated vertical drains', Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics, Ninth International Symposium on Field Measurements in Geomechanics, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth.
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Indraratna, B, Rujikiatkmajorn, C & Ardana, M 1970, 'Characterization of Smear Zone Caused by Mandrel Action', IFCEE 2015, IFCEE 2015, American Society of Civil Engineers, pp. 2225-2232.
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© ASCE 2015. In this study, the smear zone due to vertical drain installation is studied using a large, in situ sample to capture the realistic characteristics of the smear zone in relation to the in situ soil structure. The smear zone extent for Bulli clay (New South Wales, Australia) is quantified on the basis of normalised permeability and the reduction in the water content prior to consolidation. The permeability and compressibility of the soil are used to determine the extent to which the soil surrounding the PVD had become disturbed. In laboratory testing, the soil consolidation behavior due to a prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) is studied using a large scale consolidometer apparatus.

Indraratna, B, Sun, Q & Nimbalkar, S 1970, 'A critical state based constitutive model for the triaxial response of ballast incorporating particle breakage', FROM FUNDAMENTALS TO APPLICATIONS IN GEOTECHNICS, 15th Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (PCSMGE) / 8th South American Congress on Rock Mechanics (SCRM), IOS PRESS, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, pp. 1232-1239.
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ISOLA, A, SHATTRI, M, BISWAJEET, P & HELMI, Z 1970, 'UAV-Based Imaging–Digital Elevation Model Extraction'.

Khoa, NLD, Zhang, B, Wang, Y, Liu, W, Chen, F, Mustapha, S & Runcie, P 1970, 'On Damage Identification in Civil Structures Using Tensor Analysis', Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: 19th Pacific-Asia Conference Proceedings, Part 1, Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Springer International Publishing, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, pp. 459-471.
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Khosravi, P, Ghapanchi, AH & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Investigating Various Technologies Applied to Assist Seniors', Health Information Science (LNCS), International Conference on Health Information Science (HIS), Springer International Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 202-212.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. This study undertakes a systematic literature review to investigate current empirical studies on the assistive technologies applied in aged care. Our systematic review of 54 studies published from 2000 to 2014 examines the role of assistive technologies in seniors’ daily lives, from enhancements in their mobility to improvements in the social connectedness and decreases in readmission to hospitals. We found eight key issues in aged care that have been targeted by ICT researchers. We also identified the assistive technologies that have been proposed to overcome those problems, and we categorised these assistive technologies into six clusters. Our analysis showed significant growth in the number of publications in this area in the past few years. It also showed that most of the studies in this area have been conducted in North America.

Leung, HS & Wijayaratna, KP 1970, 'Implications of parking policy on traffic flow within urban environments', Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies, HKSTS 2015: Urban Transport Analytics, pp. 279-286.
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The provision of on-street parking within urban environments has been a heavily debated topic. Transport authorities have been under constant pressure to provide adequate parking to satisfy the commercial needs of the community in light of the argument that it may have a detrimental traffic impact on the network resulting in congestion. This study attempts to gain an understanding of the implications of on-street parking manoeuvres on traffic flow through an empirical analysis of field data. The study conducted parking surveys, collecting qualitative and quantitative data related to parking behaviour, on selected major arterial roads within Sydney, Australia. Analysis of survey data suggests that delays increase for parking zones with a greater level of parking turnover. Furthermore, the study completes a microsimulation modelling exercise to highlight the performance impacts of parking policies within Sydney. Finally, the study proposes alternative policies which could reduce the traffic flow implications of on-street parking.

Li, H, Zhang, S, Teng, J & Sheng, D 1970, 'A new structured subloading cam clay model', Japanese Geotechnical Society Special Publication, The Japanese Geotechnical Society, pp. 61-65.
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A theoretical study of the behavior of structured soil is presented in this paper. By introducing the influence of soil structure and loading history into the Cam Clay model, a new model is formulated. The concept of the difference of void ratios is modified to combine the structure parameter and the overconsolidation ratio and the evolution law is proposed. The new model is a two yield surface model by introducing the concept of the subloading yield surface. By making comparisons of predictions with experimental results, it is demonstrated that the new model provides satisfactory qualitative modelling of many important features of the behavior of structured soils.

Lin, P, Zhang, B, Wang, Y, Li, Z, Li, B, Wang, Y & Chen, F 1970, 'Data Driven Water Pipe Failure Prediction', Proceedings of the 24th ACM International on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, CIKM'15: 24th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, ACM, pp. 193-202.
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Water pipe failures can cause significant economic and social costs, hence have become the primary challenge to water utilities. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian nonparametric approach, namely the Dirichlet process mixture of hierarchical beta process model, for water pipe failure prediction. It can select high-risk pipes for physical condition assessment, thereby preventing disastrous failures proactively. The proposed method is adaptable to the diversity of failure patterns. Its model structure and complexity can automatically adjust according to observed data. Additionally, the sparse failure data problem that often occurs in real-world data is tackled by the proposed method via flexible pipe grouping and failure data sharing. An approximated yet computational efficient Metropolis-within-Gibbs sampling method is developed with the exploitation of the failure data sparsity for model parameter inference. The proposed method has been applied to a metropolitan water supply network. The details of the application context are also presented for demonstrating its real-life impact. The comparison experiments conducted on the metropolitan water pipe data show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art prediction methods, and it is capable of bringing enormous economic and social savings to water utilities.

Liu, Y, Wang, Y & Sowmya, A 1970, 'Batch Mode Active Learning for Object Detection Based on Maximum Mean Discrepancy', 2015 International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA), 2015 International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA), IEEE.
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Various active learning methods have been proposed for image classification problems, while very little work addresses object detection. Measuring the informativeness of an image based on its object windows is a key problem in active learning for object detection. In this paper, an image selection method to select the most representative images is proposed based on measuring their object window distributions by Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD). Then an active learning method for object detection is introduced based on MMD-based image selection. Experimental results show that MMD-based image selection can improve object detection performance compared to random image selection. The proposed active learning method based on MMD image selection also outperforms a classical active learning method and passive learning method.

Liu, Y, Wang, Y & Sowmya, A 1970, 'Batch Mode Active Learning for Object Detection Based on Maximum Mean Discrepancy', 2015 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL IMAGE COMPUTING: TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS (DICTA), International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications, IEEE, AUSTRALIA, Adelaide, pp. 205-211.

Lloret-Cabot, M, Pineda, J, Sheng, D & Neto, M 1970, 'Some remarks on the mechanical yielding of unsaturated soils', UNSATURATED SOIL MECHANICS-FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE, 6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Unsaturated Soils, CRC Press, Guilin, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 197-203.
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Malik, MI, Ahmed, S, Marcelli, A, Pal, U, Blumenstein, M, Alewijns, L & Liwicki, M 1970, 'ICDAR2015 competition on signature verification and writer identification for on- and off-line skilled forgeries (SigWIcomp2015)', 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), IEEE, Tunis, Tunisia, pp. 1186-1190.
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© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents the results of the ICDAR 2015 competition on signature verification and writer identification for on- and off-line skilled forgeries jointly organized by PR-researchers and Forensic Handwriting Examiners (FHEs). The aim is to bridge the gap between recent technological developments and forensic casework. Two modalities (signatures and handwritten text) are considered and training and evaluation data are collected and provided by FHEs and PR-researchers. Four tasks are defined for four different languages; Bengali off-line signature verification, Italian off-line signature verification, German on-line signature verification, and English handwritten text based writer identification. In total, 40 systems have participated in this competition. The participants of the signatures modality were motivated to report their results in Likelihood Ratios (LRs). This has made the systems even more interesting for application in forensic casework. For evaluating the performance of the systems, we have used the forensically substantial Cost of Log Likelihood Ratios (ɤllr) in the case of signatures, and the F-measure in the case of handwritten text.

Mandal, R, Roy, PP, Palz, U & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Date field extraction from handwritten documents using HMMs', 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), IEEE, Nancy, France, pp. 866-870.
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© 2015 IEEE. Automatic document interpretation and retrieval is an important task to access handwritten digitized document repositories. In documents, the date is an important field and it has various applications such as date-wise document indexing/retrieval. In this paper a framework has been proposed for automatic date field extraction from handwritten documents. In order to design the system, sliding window-wise Local Gradient Histogram (LGH)-based features and a character-level Hidden Markov Model (HMM)-based approach have been applied for segmentation and recognition. Individual date components such as month-word (month written in word form i.e. January, Jan, etc.), numeral, punctuation and contraction categories are segmented and labelled from a text line. Next, a Histogram of Gradient (HoG)-based features and a Support Vector Machine (SVM)- based classifier have been used to improve the results obtained from the HMM-based recognition system. Subsequently, both numeric and semi-numeric regular expressions of date patterns have been considered for undertaking date pattern extraction in labelled components. The experiments are performed on an English document dataset and the encouraging results obtained from the approach indicate the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Movassaghi, S, Majidi, A, Smith, D, Abolhasan, M, Jamalipour, A & IEEE 1970, 'Exploiting Unknown Dynamics in Communications Amongst Coexisting Wireless Body Area Networks', 2015 IEEE GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE (GLOBECOM), IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, IEEE, San Diego, CA.
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Movassaghi, S, Majidi, A, Smith, DB, Abolhasan, M, Jamalipour, A & IEEE 1970, 'Self-Organization Amongst Multiple Co-existing Wireless Body Area Networks', 2015 IEEE 26TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON PERSONAL, INDOOR, AND MOBILE RADIO COMMUNICATIONS (PIMRC), IEEE International Symposium on Personal and Indoor Mobile Radio Conference, IEEE, Hong Kong, pp. 1323-1327.
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This paper presents a novel primitive for self-organization amongst multiple coexisting Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). It follows a biologically inspired approach based on the theory of pulse-coupled oscillators. Our proposal allows for coexisting WBANs to use delayed information from previous transmissions to adjust to a collision-free TDMA schedule amongst each other for future communications. Most importantly, it does not require a global coordinator as all nodes achieve synchronization in a completely self-organized manner. Simulation results show that our protocol achieves a significantly fast convergence time despite little information from its coexisting networks. Moreover, the proposed approach is shown to be robust to variations in channel conditions, density of sensor nodes within each network and the number of coexisting WBANs. We conduct extensive simulations to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed protocol using the NS-2 simulator.

Ngoc, TN, Indraratna, B & Rujikiatkamjorn, C 1970, 'A hybrid DEM-FDM approach for load-deformation analysis of stone columns', FROM FUNDAMENTALS TO APPLICATIONS IN GEOTECHNICS, 15th Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (PCSMGE) / 8th South American Congress on Rock Mechanics (SCRM), IOS PRESS, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, pp. 1256-1264.
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Oberst, S, Griffin, D, Tuttle, S, Lambert, A & Boyce, RR 1970, 'Analysis of thin curved flexible structures for space applications', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley, Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society, Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
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With the advent of affordable nano-satellite designs (off-the-shelf payloads, standardised launch geometries), increasingly enterprises, governmental agencies and universities have started developing their own space programs to explore the environment of Low Earth Orbits. Thin, flexible and unfolding/deployable structures are common space engineering antenna and solar panel designs owing to their lightweight and ideal packaging characteristics, which are, however, difficult to experimentally validate in a 1-g environment. Further, curvatures or discontinuities to increase functionality without violating prioritised design criteria may lead to system-level trade-offs: stability issues arising from buckling in combination with micro-vibrations which feed back to the satellite's attitude behaviour. It appears that the literature lacks a systematic investigation of these aspects. On-Earth experimental validations (static experiments, model updating) are the starting point for studying the response to static/dynamic loading of thin curved flexible structures such as deployable high frequency antennas. Linear and nonlinear buckling modes owing to varying loadings (aerodynamic drag, solar radiation pressure, residual gravity and magnetic body forces) are found together with a high sensitivity to torsional modes' frequency changes under micro-vibrational forcing.

Oldham, KM, Chung, PWH, Edirisinghe, EA & Halkon, BJ 1970, 'Experiments in the Application of Computer Vision for Ball and Event Identification in Indoor Sports', COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS, 4th INNS Symposia on Computational Intelligence in Information Systems (INNS-CIIS), Springer International Publishing, Inst Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, BRUNEI, pp. 275-284.
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Pal, S, Alaei, A, Pal, U & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Interval-valued symbolic representation based method for off-line signature verification', 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), IEEE, Killarney, Ireland.
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© 2015 IEEE. The objective of this investigation is to present an interval-symbolic representation based method for offline signature verification. In the feature extraction stage, Connected Components (CC), Enclosed Regions (ER), Basic Features (BF) and Curvelet Feature (CF)-based approaches are used to characterize signatures. Considering the extracted feature vectors, an interval data value is created for each feature extracted from every individual's signatures as an interval-valued symbolic data. This process results in a signature model for each individual that consists of a set of interval values. A similarity measure is proposed as the classifier in this paper. The interval-valued symbolic representation based method has never been used for signature verification considering Indian script signatures. Therefore, to evaluate the proposed method, a Hindi signature database consisting of 2400 (100×24) genuine signatures and 3000 (100×30) skilled forgeries is employed for experimentation. Concerning this large Hindi signature dataset, the highest verification accuracy of 91.83% was obtained on a joint feature set considering all four sets of features, while 2.5%, 13.84% and 8.17% of FAR (False Acceptance Rate), FRR (False Rejection Rate), and AER (Average Error Rate) were achieved, respectively.

Rafiei, A, Maali, Y, Abolhasan, M & Franklin, DR 1970, 'A geometrical sink-based cooperative coverage hole recovery strategy for WSNs.', ICSPCS, International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication Systems, IEEE, Cairns, Australia, pp. 1-8.
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Unlike sporadic node failures, coverage holes emerging from multiple temporally-correlated node failures can severely affect quality of service in a network and put the integrity of entire wireless sensor networks at risk. Conventional topology control schemes addressing such undesirable topological changes have usually overlooked the status of participating nodes in the recovery process with respect to the deployed sink node(s) in the network. In this paper, a cooperative coverage hole recovery model is proposed which utilises the simple geometrical procedure of circle inversion. In this model, autonomous nodes consider their distances to the deployed sink node(s) in addition to their local status, while relocating towards the coverage holes. By defining suitable metrics, the performance of our proposed model performance is compared with a force-based approach.

Royel, S, Yu, Y, Li, Y, Li, J & Ha, QP 1970, 'A hysteresis model and parameter identification for MR pin joints using immune particle swarm optimization', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), 2015 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), IEEE, Gothenburg, Sweden, pp. 1319-1324.
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© 2015 IEEE. A novel hybrid model is proposed in this paper to describe the highly-nonlinear hysteretic relationship between the torque and angular velocity in a magnetorheological pin joint (MRP). The MRP's hysteresis loop is modelled by a mixture of hyperbolic and Gaussian functions using the curve fitting technique, resulting in a significant reduction of the model parameters. To identify the model parameters, an immune particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm is employed using torque-angular displacement/velocity experimental data recorded under various loading conditions. To demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed model and the effectiveness of parameter identification process, characterization test data of the smart pin torque and angular velocity are utilized for comparison.

Rujikiatkamjorn, C, Indraratna, B & Kianfar, K 1970, 'Radial consolidation model incorporating the effects of vacuum preloading and non-Darcian flow', Computer Methods and Recent Advances in Geomechanics, Computer Methods and Recent Advances in Geomechanics, CRC PRESS-TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP, KYOTO, JAPAN, pp. 1163-1167.

Sharma, N, Mandal, R, Sharma, R, Pal, U & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Bag-of-Visual Words for word-wise video script identification: A study', 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), IEEE, Killarney, Ireland.
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© 2015 IEEE. Use of multiple scripts for information communication through various media is quite common in a multilingual country. Optical character recognition of such document images or videos assists in indexing them for effective information retrieval. Hence, script identification from multi-lingual documents/images is a necessary step for selecting the appropriate OCR, due the absence of a single OCR system capable of handling multiple scripts. Script identification from printed as well as handwritten documents is a well-researched area, but script identification from video frames has not been explored much. Low resolution, blur, noisy background, to mention a few are the major bottle necks when processing video frames, and makes script identification from video images a challenging task. This paper examines the potential of Bag-of-Visual Words based techniques for word-wise script identification from video frames. Two different approaches namely, Bag-Of-Features (BoF) and Spatial Pyramid Matching (SPM), using patch based SIFT descriptors were considered for the current study. SVM Classifier was used for analysing the three popular south Indian scripts, namely Tamil, Telugu and Kannada in combination with English and Hindi. A comparative study of Bag-of-Visual words with traditional script identification techniques involving gradient based features (e.g. HoG) and texture based features (e.g. LBP) is presented. Experimental results shows that patch-based features along with SPM outperformed the traditional techniques and promising accuracies were achieved on 2534 words from the five scripts. The study reveals that patch-based feature can be used for scripts identification in-order to overcome the inherent problems with video frames.

Sharma, N, Mandal, R, Sharma, R, Pal, U & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'ICDAR2015 Competition on Video Script Identification (CVSI 2015)', 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), IEEE, pp. 1196-1200.
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© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents the final results of the ICDAR 2015 Competition on Video Script Identification. A description and performance of the participating systems in the competition are reported. The general objective of the competition is to evaluate and benchmark the available methods on word-wise video script identification. It also provides a platform for researchers around the globe to particularly address the video script identification problem and video text recognition in general. The competition was organised around four different tasks involving various combinations of scripts comprising tri-script and multi-script scenarios. The dataset used in the competition comprised ten different scripts. In total, six systems were received from five participants over the tasks offered. This report details the competition dataset specifications, evaluation criteria, summary of the participating systems and their performance across different tasks. The systems submitted by Google Inc. were the winner of the competition for all the tasks, whereas the systems received from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Computer Vision Center (CVC) were very close competitors.

Sharma, N, Mandal, R, Sharma, R, Roy, PP, Pal, U & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Multi-lingual text recognition from video frames', 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), IEEE, Nancy, France, pp. 951-955.
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© 2015 IEEE. Text recognition from video frames is a challenging task due to low resolution, blur, complex and coloured backgrounds, noise, to mention a few. Consequently, the traditional ways of text recognition from scanned documents having simple backgrounds fails when applied to video text. Although there are various techniques available for text recognition from handwritten and printed documents with simple backgrounds, text recognition from video frames has not been comprehensively investigated, especially for multi-lingual videos. In this paper, we present a technique for multi-lingual video text recognition which involves script identification in the first stage, followed by word and character recognition, and finally the results are refined using a post-processing technique. Considering the inherent problems in videos, a Spatial Pyramid Matching (SPM) based technique, using patch-based SIFT descriptors and SVM classifier, is employed for script identification. In the next stage, a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based approach is used for word and character recognition, which utilizes the context information. Finally, a lexicon-based post-processing technique is applied to verify and refine the word recognition results. The proposed method was tested on a dataset comprising of 4800 words from three different scripts, namely, Roman (English), Hindi and Bengali. The script identification results obtained are encouraging. The word and character recognition results are also encouraging considering the complexity and problems associated with video text processing.

Suwanwiwat, H, Blumenstein, M & Pal, U 1970, 'A complete automatic short answer assessment system with student identification', 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), 2015 13th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), IEEE, Nancy, France, pp. 611-615.
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© 2015 IEEE. There are only a few studies undertaken in developing automatic assessment systems using handwriting recognition, even though a successful system would undoubtedly benefit the education system as schools and universities in many countries still employ paper-based examinations. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no existing work on an automatic off-line short answer assessment system comprising a student identification component. Hence in this paper, the authors propose a system towards this, where a new feature extraction technique called the Enhanced Water Reservoir, Loop and Gaussian Grid Feature, as well as other enhanced feature extraction techniques were utilised. Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines were employed as the classifiers; they were used for the investigation, and a comparison of the recognition and accuracy rates of the proposed systems, as well as the feature extraction techniques, was undertaken. The proposed assessment system achieved a recognition rate of 87.12% with 91.12% assessment accuracy, and the student identification component obtained a recognition rate of 99.52% with a 100% identification accuracy rate.

Suwanwiwat, H, Blumenstein, M & Pal, U 1970, 'Short answer question examination using an automatic off-line handwriting recognition system and a novel combined feature', 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2015 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), IEEE, Killarney, Ireland.
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© 2015 IEEE. Off-line automatic assessment systems can be an aid for teachers in the marking process. There has been no recent work in the development of off-line automatic assessment systems using handwriting recognition, even though such systems will clearly benefit the education sector. The reason is many schools and universities in many parts of the world still use paper-based examination. This research proposes the use of a newly developed feature extraction technique called the Modified Water Reservoir, Loop and Gaussian Grid Feature, as well as other feature extraction techniques. These techniques were investigated employing artificial neural networks and support vector machines as classifiers to develop an automatic assessment system for marking short answer questions. The system has high assessment accuracy (up to 94.75% for hand printed, 96.09% for cursive handwritten, and 95.71% for hand printed and cursive handwritten combined). The proposed system also includes assessment criteria to augment its accuracy.

Sykora, M, Chung, PWH, Folland, JP, Halkon, BJ & Edirisinghe, EA 1970, 'Advances in Sports Informatics Research', Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 4th INNS Symposia on Computational Intelligence in Information Systems (INNS-CIIS), Springer International Publishing, Inst Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, BRUNEI, pp. 265-274.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. With advances in hardware and software, computer science based technologies within sports sciences are becoming more pervasive. This paper presents the growing field of applied computer science often referred to as “sports informatics”, and considers some of the advancements that have been made by its relatively small, but growing research community. The review includes: feedback systems, team play analysis, image/motion analysis, exertion interfaces and virtual reality, and data mining and artificial intelligence.

Teng, J, Sheng, D, Liang, S & Zhang, S 1970, 'A numerical model for heat and moisture migration in unsaturated freezing soil', UNSATURATED SOIL MECHANICS-FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE, 6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Unsaturated Soils, CRC Press, Guilin, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 629-634.
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Teng, J, Zhang, S, Leng, W & Sheng, D 1970, 'Numerical investigation on vapor transfer in unsaturated soil during freezing', Japanese Geotechnical Society Special Publication, The Japanese Geotechnical Society, pp. 29-34.
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This paper presents a new approach for modelling moisture migration in unsaturated freezing soil, in which the evaporation and condensation processes of water vapor are taken into account. Comparing predicted date with the measured result of one-dimensional soil freezing test shows proposed model is capable of effectively simulating the freezing process of unsaturated soil. Parametric analysis is carried out to clarify the role of vapor in moisture migration during freezing, which shows that vapor largely contributes to ice formation, occupying around 10%~60% of total water fluxes in an unsaturated and closed system. The result also shows that, total ice content and vapor flux percentage increases and decreases with the increase of initial water content, respectively. The higher the temperature gradient, the greater the vapor flux percentage, while the total ice content is insensitive to the temperature gradient. Peak values exist for the variations of total ice content and vapor flux against saturated hydraulic conductivity.

Wang, Q, Wang, S, Sloan, SW & Sheng, D 1970, 'Laboratory study of the pressurized grouting in sand', FROM FUNDAMENTALS TO APPLICATIONS IN GEOTECHNICS, 15th Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (PCSMGE) / 8th South American Congress on Rock Mechanics (SCRM), IOS PRESS, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA, pp. 1877-1884.
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Wang, Y, Li, B, Wang, Y & Chen, F 1970, 'Metadata dependent Mondrian processes', 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2015, pp. 1339-1347.
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Stochastic partition processes in a product space play an important role in modeling relational data. Recent studies on the Mondrian process have introduced more flexibility into the block structure in relational models. A side-effect of such high flexibility is that, in data sparsity scenarios, the model is prone to overfit. In reality, relational entities are always associated with meta information, such as user profiles in a social network. In this paper, we propose a metadata dependent Mondrian process (MDMP) to incorporate meta information into the stochastic partition process in the product space and the entity allocation process on the resulting block structure. MDMP can not only encourage homogeneous relational interactions within blocks but also discourage meta-label diversity within blocks. Regularized by meta information, MDMP becomes more robust in data sparsity scenarios and easier to converge in posterior inference. We apply MDMP to link prediction and rating prediction and demonstrate that MDMP is more effective than the baseline models in prediction accuracy with a more parsimonious model structure.

Wen, T, Wijayaratna, K, Gardner, LM, Dixit, V & Travis Waller, S 1970, 'A learning model for traffic assignment: Incorporating Bayesian inference within the strategic user equilibrium model', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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This paper addresses adjusted travel route choice in the context of new transport developments and incremental traveller learning. It is assumed that new developments can impact traveller perceptions and adjustments in multiple ways. For instance, if travellers expect a project to significantly increase or decrease overall travel demand they may change their daily route choice based on those new expectations. Further, over time, travellers will learn actual network demand, and adapt their route choice accordingly. In particular, this paper employs a methodological framework to model the day-to-day learning process of road users, and the corresponding system performance over time with a focus on the impact of specific new developments. Travellers assume an initial demand distribution, and incrementally update it based on their day-to-day travel experiences. Bayesian Inference is used to update the travel demand distribution, and the strategic user equilibrium model is used to compute the underlying traffic assignment pattern. Numerical analysis is conducted on a test network to demonstrate the learning process in terms of the perceived travel demand, path choice, and perceived path travel times.

Wen, T, Wijayaratna, K, Gardner, LM, Dixit, V & Travis Waller, S 1970, 'A learning model for traffic assignment: Incorporating Bayesian inference within the strategic user equilibrium model', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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© 2015 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. This paper addresses adjusted travel route choice in the context of new transport developments and incremental traveller learning. It is assumed that new developments can impact traveller perceptions and adjustments in multiple ways. For instance, if travellers expect a project to significantly increase or decrease overall travel demand they may change their daily route choice based on those new expectations. Further, over time, travellers will learn actual network demand, and adapt their route choice accordingly. In particular, this paper employs a methodological framework to model the day-to-day learning process of road users, and the corresponding system performance over time with a focus on the impact of specific new developments. Travellers assume an initial demand distribution, and incrementally update it based on their day-to-day travel experiences. Bayesian Inference is used to update the travel demand distribution, and the strategic user equilibrium model is used to compute the underlying traffic assignment pattern. Numerical analysis is conducted on a test network to demonstrate the learning process in terms of the perceived travel demand, path choice, and perceived path travel times.

Williams, JJR, Zhang, Z, Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 1970, 'Model updating of brake components' influence on instability predictions', 22nd International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2015, International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Florence, Italy.
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Customers perceive brake squeal as a major annoyance in their automobiles' acoustic performance. Squeal is self-excited, friction induced audible noise above 1 kHz and one of the strongest cost drivers in noise vibration and harshness departments of automotive manufacturers. In order to reduce expensive and time-consuming dynamometer and road vehicle tests, numerical complex eigenvalue analysis has become popular in predicting brake squeal. However, one difficulty in assessing the prediction quality apart from the linearisation of the system is the complexity of the brake system to be modelled. Using structural finite elements the computer model is often insufficiently detailed, insufficiently damped or insufficiently experimentally validated so that instabilities causing brake squeal are over-predicted. Here we present the process of updating components of a brake system's squeal prediction and the improvement in modelling using updated material parameters and a Rayleigh damping model by applying a rigorous mesh refinement study and different friction laws.

Xu, J, Shivakumara, P, Lu, T, Tan, CL & Blumenstein, M 1970, 'Text detection in born-digital images by mass estimation', 2015 3rd IAPR Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR), 2015 3rd IAPR Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR), IEEE, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, pp. 690-694.
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© 2015 IEEE.There is a need for effective web-document understanding due to the explosive progress of internet and network technologies. In this paper, we propose a new method for text detection in born-digital images by introducing a mass estimation concept. We propose to explore super-pixel information of different color channels to identify text atoms in images. The proposed method uses similarity graphs and spectral clustering to identify candidate text regions. We propose a new idea of mapping Gabor responses of a candidate text region to a spatial circle to study the spatial coherency of pixels. We introduce a mass estimation concept to identify text candidates from the pixel distribution in a spatial circle. The linear linkage graphs help in grouping text candidates to obtain full text lines. The same Gabor responses are used as features to eliminate false positives with an SVM classifier. We evaluate the proposed method for the testing on standard datasets, such as ICDAR 2013 (challenge-1) and the Situ et al. dataset. Experimental results on both the datasets show that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods.

Xu, R & Fatahi, B 1970, 'Three Dimensional Numerical Analysis of Seismic Soil-Structure Interaction Considering Soil Plasticity', The New Zealand Geotechnical Society (NZGS), INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EARTHQUAKE GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING, The New Zealand Geotechnical Society (NZGS), Christchurch, New Zealand.

Zhang, Z, Halkon, B, Chou, SM & Qu, X 1970, 'Shoulder Joint Angle Errors Caused by Marker Offset', Procedia Engineering, 'The Impact of Technology on Sport VI' 7th Asia-Pacific Congress on Sports Technology, APCST, Elsevier BV, Barcelona, SPAIN, pp. 479-484.
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Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. The International Society of Biomechanics (ISB) has recommended a standardization of the definition of the joint coordinate system (JCS) and use of a sequential rotation to describe human shoulder joint rotation. Markers attached to the surface of the body may move during the process of motion data capture, resulting in an offset from their initial location. This leads to a change of the JCS and therefore affects the calculated shoulder joint angles. In this research study, we presented a simple marker offset model to quantify the shoulder joint errors for both static poses and dynamic activities. Specific conditions of different offsets and elbow flexion angles were studied. Results showed that the errors should not be neglected when the shoulder elevation angle was near -90° and 90°, or elbow flexion was very small. Attention should be paid to these errors for such activities especially walking and throwing.

Zhang, Z, Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 1970, 'Instability analysis of coupled friction oscillators with uncertainties in contact conditions', 22nd International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2015, International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Florence, Italy.
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Although brake squeal is a significant noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) issue which incurs significant cost in the automotive industry, its prediction is still difficult. This is because brake squeal is essentially a nonlinear phenomenon and traditional complex eigenvalue analysis (CEA) is a linear method. In addition, there are many uncertainties in a brake system such as material properties, operating and contact conditions which cannot be determined accurately with confidence. Here, the influence of uncertainties in contact conditions on the instability of an analytical model consisting of 3x3 coupled oscillators in point contact with a sliding rigid plate is analysed. The uncertainties in contact conditions considered are: percentage of contact, stiffness and friction laws for the contact (Amonton-Coulomb, relative velocity dependent and LuGre law). The instability is analysed in the frequency domain by randomising these three uncertainty parameters. The results will be discussed with a view to applying this approach to the analysis of the squeal propensity for a full brake system.

Zhang, Z, Oberst, S, Williams, JJR & Lai, JCS 1970, 'Improving Brake squeal propensitiy prediction by model updating', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley, Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society, Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
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Brake squeal as a significant warranty-claim related costs problem to the automotive industry is difficult to model numerically and analyse because of inherent nonlinearities, uncertainties in material properties, contact and boundary conditions, and system complexity. Often, model components are linearised and not experimentally validated. Sophisticated contact or friction models as well as stiffness in joints are often not considered owing to difficulties in experimental validation. In this study, a full brake system is modally updated at the component level and then at the subassembly level (pad assembly alone, pad in bracket). Squeal prediction using the complex eigenvalue analysis on a finite element model of the system is compared to squeal results from a noise dynamometer test. The results are discussed with respect to further refinement of the modelling approach and improvements to brake squeal prediction.

Zhou, A, Li, J & Sheng, D 1970, 'Non-isothermal water retention curve and volume change equation for unsaturated soils', UNSATURATED SOIL MECHANICS-FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE, 6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Unsaturated Soils, CRC Press, Guilin, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 343-348.
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Youssef, AM, Al-Kathery, M & Pradhan, B 2015, 'Assessment of impact of mass movements on the upper Tayyah valley's bridge along Shear escarpment highway, Asir region (Saudi Arabia) using remote sensing data and field investigation', Copernicus GmbH.
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