Location

Arlington, Virginia

Date

14 Aug 2008, 4:30pm - 6:00pm

Abstract

This paper presents the study of the rupture of an embankment on soft clay, localized in Recife, Brazil. The data was obtained from partnership of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil and the company Gusmão Engineers Associates, which it was possible to perform a Master Thesis. The embankment was constructed without geotechnical investigation project, accompaniment and technological control. After the rupture, to understand the process, a geotechnical investigation was performed to permit a total stress stability analyze / back-analyze, considering circular and non-circular surfaces, occurrence of cracking in embankment, and the three-dimensional effect. The Data Base of Recife soft clays (Coutinho et al. 1998c) were used to complement the technical information necessary to the study. In the evaluation of the undrained shear strength of the foundation (Su) was used the results of field vane test, with consideration of the corrections proposals for Bjerrum (1973). All the results of this work showed that rupture was previsible if adequate geotechnical investigation and stability analysis had been done.

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

Share

 
COinS
 
Aug 11th, 12:00 AM Aug 16th, 12:00 AM

Failure of the Embankment on Soft Soil in Recife-Brazil

Arlington, Virginia

This paper presents the study of the rupture of an embankment on soft clay, localized in Recife, Brazil. The data was obtained from partnership of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil and the company Gusmão Engineers Associates, which it was possible to perform a Master Thesis. The embankment was constructed without geotechnical investigation project, accompaniment and technological control. After the rupture, to understand the process, a geotechnical investigation was performed to permit a total stress stability analyze / back-analyze, considering circular and non-circular surfaces, occurrence of cracking in embankment, and the three-dimensional effect. The Data Base of Recife soft clays (Coutinho et al. 1998c) were used to complement the technical information necessary to the study. In the evaluation of the undrained shear strength of the foundation (Su) was used the results of field vane test, with consideration of the corrections proposals for Bjerrum (1973). All the results of this work showed that rupture was previsible if adequate geotechnical investigation and stability analysis had been done.