Location
St. Louis, Missouri
Date
03 Jun 1993, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Abstract
A building collapse is investigated in which a shallow trench, excavated along the length of the building, resulted in the building's collapse. An investigation indicated that the trench had been excavated within 1 ft (0.3 m) of the foundation and that the foundation had been constructed on approximately 7 ft (2.1 m) of soft silty clay with the bottom portion of this soil highly saturated. The bearing capacity of the foundation, prior to excavation, was estimated to have a safety factor as low as 1.5. As a result of the proximity of the trench to the foundation and the soft soils, the trench collapsed soon after excavation. It is believed that the lower portion of the soil flowed into the trench causing a loss of bearing capacity. An understanding of the geologic setting of the foundation soils, coupled with soils information from the USDA's Soil Conservation Service indicated the hazards of excavating in this soil.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
3rd Conference of the International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 1993 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
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
Recommended Citation
Vitton, S. J. and Brown, R. C., "Building Collapse Due to Shallow Trench Excavation" (1993). International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering. 1.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icchge/3icchge/3icchge-session08/1
Building Collapse Due to Shallow Trench Excavation
St. Louis, Missouri
A building collapse is investigated in which a shallow trench, excavated along the length of the building, resulted in the building's collapse. An investigation indicated that the trench had been excavated within 1 ft (0.3 m) of the foundation and that the foundation had been constructed on approximately 7 ft (2.1 m) of soft silty clay with the bottom portion of this soil highly saturated. The bearing capacity of the foundation, prior to excavation, was estimated to have a safety factor as low as 1.5. As a result of the proximity of the trench to the foundation and the soft soils, the trench collapsed soon after excavation. It is believed that the lower portion of the soil flowed into the trench causing a loss of bearing capacity. An understanding of the geologic setting of the foundation soils, coupled with soils information from the USDA's Soil Conservation Service indicated the hazards of excavating in this soil.
