Reanalysis long-term settlement of San Jacinto Monument with a power law model

Abstract

The settlement of San Jacinto Monument is a very valuable long-term monitoring data (over 80 years) for studying time-dependent behavior in geotechnical engineering. Because the large discrepancy between predicted data and measured data in previous publications with other methods applied, it is restudied with a power law model by the author. The concept of creep associated with rate of loading is introduced. To verify the viewpoint, two kinds of tests (i.e., 1D consolidation test and 1D compression test) on the clay from National Geotechnical Experimental Site (NGES) at Texas A&M University are conducted. The case of San Jacinto Monument is reanalyzed with the model and the predicted data by the model are in very good agreement with the actual data, which demonstrate that the proposed model is suitable and flexible for two types of time-dependent behavior, namely, consolidation and creep, in geotechnical engineering.