Static liquefaction is a form of unstable behaviour of granular soil. It is most common in saturated loose sands under monotonically loaded undrained conditions. Predicting static liquefaction using an elastic-plastic model that incorporates the non-associated plastic flow rule and strain hardening is possible. The article briefly describes the unstable behaviour of saturated sand in undrained conditions under a monotonic load. A simple elastic-plastic model with deviatoric hardening and a Drucker–Prager load surface is presented. The constitutive relationships were programmed in a Python script. Simulations of triaxial tests under mixed stress-strain control demonstrated the model’s ability to predict various undrained sand responses, including fully stable responses (no liquefaction) and partial and complete liquefaction under triaxial compression and tension. Predicting static liquefaction is possible by properly selecting the proportions of the parameters involved in plastic potential and loading functions and the parameter A used in the deviatoric hardening rule of hyperbolic type.

This study presents a possibility of detecting wear of a valve plate in multi-piston axial pump based on time-frequency analysis of measured signals. Short-time Fourier transform STFT and the generalized Wigner-Ville algorithm WVD were used for this purpose. The tests were carried out on a multi-piston axial pump with swinging plate, in which the worn valve plates were mounted. Valve plate wear was related with the formation of flow micro-channels between the pump suction hole and its pumping hole on the plate transition zone surface. The developed channels initiate flow of the operational fluid, the results of which is lack of leak-tightness between suction and pumping zones, associated with a decrease in operational pressure and drop in general efficiency.