Abstract
The estimation of the long-term foundation settlement in soft soil is very complex, which is attributed to a number of uncertainties associated with various factors, such as: (i) The compressibility parameters obtained in the laboratory from samples of relatively small size that are more homogeneous compared to heterogeneous field sediments in which various soil types may be interlayered at random and may occur without exhibiting any real stratification; (ii) limitations and unrealistic assumptions prevailing in the conventional consolidation analysis. These have often resulted in the large discrepancy between actual in-situ settlements and the predictions from the conventional consolidation models (e.g., Terzaghi’s model). In this study, a field data based method inspired from an observational approach is proposed and validated against a number of high quality long-term field settlement data. Moreover, the corresponding geological soil properties obtained from field and laboratory tests have been presented, with the aim of providing useful practical references for other projects with similar geological profile. Furthermore, the proposed model is compared with existing prediction models. The results show that the newly proposed model can provide more reliable and accurate prediction of foundation settlements compared with other methods established in practice.
Highlights
The surface of the Aerodrome and the groundsills suffer from large settlements that occur over an extended period of time, when located on soft soils
Many improvements have been proposed by various authors taking into account some of these aspects (Brand and Brenner, 1981), the discrepancy between predicted values and actual in-situ settlements is still often evident, especially for heterogeneous soil deposits. This discrepancy is probably attributed to the fact that the compressibility parameters are usually obtained from conventional laboratory testing using relatively small sized and homogenous soil samples those are not representative of heterogeneous field sediments containing various soil types interlayered at random (Al-Shamrani, 2005)
Three field based investigations related to the settlement of soft ground, along with the corresponding geological soil properties obtained from field and laboratory tests were presented and used for model development and verification
Summary
The surface of the Aerodrome and the groundsills suffer from large settlements that occur over an extended period of time, when located on soft soils. Due to the complexity of topography and the geotechnical conditions, many uncertainties for obtaining the soil parameters exists and it is a good option to apply the observational methods based on the field settlement measurement data to predict future settlement in the site of the airport, comparing with conventional analysis of consolidation settlement.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
