Location

Arlington, Virginia

Date

15 Aug 2008, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Abstract

Three projects of end of studies which are related to soil mechanics pathology case histories were undertaken by students at civil engineering department of National Engineering School of Tunis. The two first projects dealt with Joumine and Sidi Saâd earth dams cases. For Joumine dam, concrete slabs of the spillway have been affected by serious disorders. The first disorder is related to the swelling nature of soil foundation of concrete slabs. The second disorder is attributed to high excess pore pressure responsible of slabs up risings. As solution the jet grouting technique was designed to eliminate high pore pressure in the soil foundation of slabs. For Sidi Saâd dam disorders were attributed to high active soil pressures exerted on retaining walls of the spillway. As solution anchored cables were adopted to improve the stability of concrete walls. The third project dealt with four engineering structures crossing Tunis La Goulette express route. All approach slabs were affected by differential settlements due to the existence of highly compressible thick soft clay layers. As solution three soil improvement techniques (rigid inclusions, stone columns prefabricated vertical drains) were compared to stop non admissible consolidation settlements. For each case history, the methodology to diagnose causes of disorders is first presented, second, the utilized approaches, especially those involving finite element codes usage, are highlighted, finally proposal of remedies to re establish suitable exploitation of projects are exposed. This paper well illustrates the great importance for under graduated students, when preparing their works of end of projects, to more understand fundamentals in soil mechanics in parallel with treating serious problems of pathology of case histories.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Meeting Name

6th Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Document Version

Final Version

Rights

© 2008 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

File Type

text

Language

English

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Educating Students Through Understanding the Pathology of Geotechnical Projects

Arlington, Virginia

Three projects of end of studies which are related to soil mechanics pathology case histories were undertaken by students at civil engineering department of National Engineering School of Tunis. The two first projects dealt with Joumine and Sidi Saâd earth dams cases. For Joumine dam, concrete slabs of the spillway have been affected by serious disorders. The first disorder is related to the swelling nature of soil foundation of concrete slabs. The second disorder is attributed to high excess pore pressure responsible of slabs up risings. As solution the jet grouting technique was designed to eliminate high pore pressure in the soil foundation of slabs. For Sidi Saâd dam disorders were attributed to high active soil pressures exerted on retaining walls of the spillway. As solution anchored cables were adopted to improve the stability of concrete walls. The third project dealt with four engineering structures crossing Tunis La Goulette express route. All approach slabs were affected by differential settlements due to the existence of highly compressible thick soft clay layers. As solution three soil improvement techniques (rigid inclusions, stone columns prefabricated vertical drains) were compared to stop non admissible consolidation settlements. For each case history, the methodology to diagnose causes of disorders is first presented, second, the utilized approaches, especially those involving finite element codes usage, are highlighted, finally proposal of remedies to re establish suitable exploitation of projects are exposed. This paper well illustrates the great importance for under graduated students, when preparing their works of end of projects, to more understand fundamentals in soil mechanics in parallel with treating serious problems of pathology of case histories.