Experimental study on stiffness properties of non-engineered clay and granular fills

  • PDF / 1,286,360 Bytes
  • 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
  • 71 Downloads / 161 Views

DOWNLOAD

REPORT


ORIGINAL PAPER

Experimental study on stiffness properties of non-engineered clay and granular fills Abolfazl Eslami & Mohsen Ahmadnezhad & Amaneh Eslami Kenarsari & Samieh Rezazadeh

Received: 28 December 2013 / Accepted: 2 April 2014 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2014

Abstract Non-engineered fills are produced by human activity or natural occurrences. They can be placed without any controlled compaction effort or processing operation. In order to determine the stiffness properties of non-engineered fills, laboratory experimental studies have been performed and case history records are compiled. Some laboratory tests were conducted on poorly graded sand and fragmentary cohesive materials from a non-engineered fill made during canal excavation in the northern area of Iran. One-dimensional compression behavior of the fill materials was assessed and the deduced constrained moduli were compared with the results of other studies. Evaluation of case histories indicates that settlement caused from water infiltration into spoil fills may lead to excessive settlements. Moreover, in massive cohesive fills, hydro-compression settlement is significant. However, in loose granular fills, settlements due to dynamic loading and liquefaction can be substantial. Investigations revealed that, except for the cases with saturated cohesive materials, stiffness properties seemed to be a major aspect in comparison to the strength characteristics in geotechnical practice.

A. Eslami (*) : S. Rezazadeh Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, AmirKabir University of Technology, AUT, Tehran, Iran e-mail: [email protected] S. Rezazadeh e-mail: [email protected] M. Ahmadnezhad Faculty of Engineering, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran e-mail: [email protected] A. Eslami Kenarsari Islamic Azad University of Lahijan, Lahijan, Iran e-mail: [email protected]

Keywords Non-engineered fill . Stiffness properties . Laboratory experiments . Granular and fragmentary cohesive geomaterials

Introduction Cut and fill is inevitable in order to achieve the desired and level surfaces in construction works. A wide variety of materials including domestic refuse, building or quarry waste, chemical waste, and geomaterials including various soils and rocks may be filled in the depressions to achieve the desired level or raising the ground level. With the growth of cities and industrial areas, buildings are increasingly constructed on areas such as old filled basements, reclaimed ponds and marshes, and in-filled opencast mining regions, while most of these fills are placed without any compaction as processing effort. The increasing demand for building land and depleting appropriate sites that support foundations in some cases enforces geotechnical engineers to construct at these sites primed for reasons other than their fairly geotechnical properties. On the other hand, the main body of documented information on soil mechanics and foundation engineering deals with virgin ground, while no specific solutions can be found for