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In recent years, engineering constructions increase rapidly in western and central areas of China, where expansive soil widely distributes. Since expansive soil is sensitive to water content, the characterization of its shear strength should be carefully conducted. For simplicity and ease of use, the Mohr-Coulomb criterion is often adopted to describe the shear strength of expansive soil. In this paper, the physical meaning of the cohesion and frictional strength of expansive soil are explained, and the variations of the strength parameters with water content are investigated. By fitting to the experimental results from direct shear test and triaxial tests, the changing characteristics of cohesion and friction angle with water content are obtained.

Many investigations have reported threshold switching (TS) effects in amorphous semiconductors, but it is rarely observed in BiFeO3 nanoparticles. Here, the effects of cobalt doping on the electrical conductivity of Bi0.9Nd0.1Fe1−xCoxO3 (x = 0, 0.01, 0.03, 0.05) nanoparticles were investigated. Leakage current density (J) versus applied voltage (V) curves were measured and it was found that the leakage current increases with increases of the cobalt dopant concentration. With the increase of the maximal applied voltage, the samples with cobalt doping exhibit nearly symmetric TS behaviors at room temperature. With the increase of cobalt dopant concentration, the optical band gap is decreased, and the smallest optical band gap value (∼2.01 eV) is observed for the 3% Co doped BiFeO3 sample. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the samples shows that the cobalt dopant induces an enhancement of the oxygen vacancy concentration. Possible mechanisms for the threshold switching effects are discussed on the basis of a conductive filament model. The mobile charge carriers align to form conducting filaments when the threshold voltage (VTH) is achieved, corresponding to the transition from a high-resistance state to a low-resistance state, and the rupture of the conductive path takes place when the applied voltage is decreased. The leakage current decreases dramatically and eventually returns to the initial high-resistance state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly aliovalent Na(1+) ions were selected as the dopant to substitute Bi(3+) ions in BiFeO₃ (BFO) and Bi1-xNaxFeO₃ (x = 0, 0.01, 0.03, 0.05) nanoparticles prepared via a facile sol-gel method. Weak ferromagnetism and an obvious exchange bias (EB) phenomenon without field cooling were observed in the samples. To establish the presence of EB in the nanoparticles, training effect (TE) data were analyzed using Binek's model. Moreover, with the increase in Na(1+) content, the band gap was decreased, while interestingly, the leakage current density was significantly reduced and the smallest leakage current density (∼10(-7) A cm(-2)) was observed for the 3% Na-doped BFO. The electrical conduction mechanism of samples was investigated by plotting log J versus log E. Oxygen vacancies decreased with the increase of Na content analyzed through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. To further explain the decrease of band gap and leakage current density with the increase of Na content, the interplay of oxygen vacancies and holes was analyzed and a phenomenological qualitative model based on the electronic energy band proposed.