Study on the ground settlement during reclamation of Xiamen airport

Abstract

The settlement of soft soil foundation is a critical problem for the airport construction in coastal area. In order to study the long-term settlement characteristics of soft soil foundation of a Chinese reclamation airport (Xiamen Airport), this paper analyzed the monitoring settlement development of different regions in two runways to be built. The relationship between the total settlement from January 11, 2019 to May 22, 2020 and the thickness of soft soil was studied for guiding the settlement prediction of subsequent construction. The results showed that the development law of foundation settlement with different preloading durations under the same thickness of soft soil is different. As the preloading duration increases, the total settlement in the same period becomes smaller. Besides, the total settlement of Runway 2 increases approximately linearly with the thickness of soft soil (silt soil). However, the total settlement of Runway 1 under different thickness of soft soil is similar, which probably indicates primary consolidation has basically completed in this region. The research results in this paper is useful to understanding the settlement characteristics of Xiamen Airport, and can be used to analyse the settlement characteristics of other similar reclamation airports.