Discussion of ‘Soil creep effects on ground lateral deformation and pore water pressure under embankments’

Abstract

Settlement analysis of field cases is normally studied based on parameters interpreted from laboratory samples influenced by varying degrees of sample disturbance. Such disturbance is more pronounced in natural soft clays and could significantly affect the engineering properties of the soil, e.g. the over consolidation ratio (OCR) and compressibility index (C_c). Hence, it is vital to understand the role of sample quality in relation to soil characterisation for long-term settlement analyses. In this work, this is numerically illustrated by use of a simple creep model along with realistic parameter selection. This work takes its starting point on critical discussion of the work presented by Fatahi et al. (2013) and uses the opportunity to further clarify some important aspects of settlement/creep analyses in light of sample quality and parameter interpretation valid for the corresponding constitutive model.

Keywords:

• clay
• soil creep
• modelling
• settlement

ORCID

Gustav Grimstad http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4433-2659

Additional information

Funding

This work is carried out under the Marie Curie Action, European FP7, CREEP project, Grant number PIAG-GA-2011-286397.