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Shear strength and breakage of disturbed snail fossils adjacent to the preservation zone in the Mae Moh coal mine

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Abstract

The preserved area of snail fossils, with layers of up to 10 m deep, in the lignite coal mining area of Mae Moh in northern Thailand has been set aside; however, there is concern about the impact of weathering and erosion in the long term due to the breakage and low strength of snail fossils. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the strength properties of the snail fossils in association with the effect of particle breakage using a direct simple shear test. Disturbed snail fossil samples were collected from the subsurface of the Mae Moh coal mine outside the preservation area. The results indicate that snail fossils are highly compressible due to the angular and delicate snail particles. In addition, the internal friction angle of snail fossils is close to 31°, which is much lower than that of other carbonate sands, but comparable to those of hard particle sands or commonly encountered sands.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and JSPS Asian CORE Program. The authors would like to express their gratitude to all the staff of the Geotechnical Engineering Department of EGAT for their kind assistance. Special thanks to the Research and Development Division, NIPPO Corporation, for providing the experimental apparatus to carry out the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of International Development Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan

    Soksan Thay

  2. Global Scientific Information and Computing Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan

    Thirapong Pipatpongsa

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan

    Akihiro Takahashi

  4. Research and Development Division, NIPPO Corporation, 6-70, Mihashi, Nishi-ku, Saitama, 331-0052, Japan

    Tsutomu Ishigaki

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  1. Soksan Thay
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  2. Thirapong Pipatpongsa
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  3. Akihiro Takahashi
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  4. Tsutomu Ishigaki
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Correspondence to Thirapong Pipatpongsa.

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Thay, S., Pipatpongsa, T., Takahashi, A. et al. Shear strength and breakage of disturbed snail fossils adjacent to the preservation zone in the Mae Moh coal mine. Bull Eng Geol Environ 73, 95–107 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-013-0515-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-013-0515-2

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