Stability Analysis and Evaluation of Soil Cave Foundation under the role of Groundwater in Karst Area

Abstract

Soil cave foundation is a common type in the soil foundation in karst area, the stability of the foundation will be directly affected by the soil cave collapse destruction. Currently, the stability evaluation of soil cave foundation is mostly focus on the quantitative evaluation, such as the collapse mechanism and prevention, while the qualitative assessment is rare. Based on the plastoelasticity theory, firstly analyze the stress state of the soil cave wall- surrounding body in the foundation, distinguish the stress concentration influence area, then improve the soil cave foundation stability computation model by using Mole- coulomb strength criterion, finally, take a soil cave foundation stability evaluation as the example in Tongren area, Guizhou, confirming the feasibility and reliability of the improvement model. The influence of the foundation bed size, buried depth, soil cave shape and groundwater level depth was further studied, which reveals the mechanism of the soil cave collapse destruction. And the research indicated that the improved model is feasible, when the foundation bed size is smaller, the buried depth is shallower, the hole shape is more spiky and the groundwater level depth is shallower, the soil cave stability coefficient will be bigger, which is more advantageous to the stability, and the influence of groundwater level depth is more sensitive to the soil cave stability, once the groundwater level depth dropped a little, the stable soil cave will become into failure and instability. Therefore, the quantitative evaluation should be paid more attention in soil cave foundation stability evaluation, particularly under the ground water environment, simultaneously, the calculation results, like soil cave foundation maximum size, the critical buried depth, the maximum water level buried depth, have the strong directive function to the soil cave foundation treatment and design.