Real liquefaction probability of non-cohesive soils in Semani Area, in Albania

Abstract Improper recognition of the subsoil is the most common cause of problems in the implementation of construction projects and construction facilities failures. Most often, their direct cause is the mismatch of the scope of geotechnical diagnosis to the appropriate geotechnical category, or substantive errors, including incomplete or incorrect interpretation in the creation of a geological-engineering model and often overlooked hydrogeological conditions. In many cases, insufficient recognition and documentation of geotechnical and/or geological and engineering conditions leads to damage and construction failures, delays in consider construction, and the increase of the investment budget. That’s why, in order to avoid the above, particular attention should be paid to proper geotechnical and geological-engineering documentation at the design and construction stages. The selected example of the investment analyzed errors in the geological-engineering documentation, which mainly concerned the lack of recognition of locally occurring organic soils, the incorrectly determined location of the groundwater table and the degree of compaction of non-cohesive soils, and numerous errors of calculated values of soil uplift pressure. The detection of the errors presented in the paper made it possible to select the correct technology for the construction of the sanitary sewage system and to increase the thickness of the horizontal shutter made of jet grouting columns in the area of the excavation. In addition, the article discusses the principles of proper calculation of limit states and subsoil testing, which have a significant impact on the implementation of planned investments.

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Evaluation of Undrained Shear Strength of Miocene Clay from the Weight Sounding Test (WST)

Archives of Mining Sciences ◽

10.1515/amsc-2017-0028 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 62 (2) ◽

pp. 367-384

Author(s):

Sebastian Olesiak

Keyword(s):

Shear Strength ◽

Field Testing ◽

Field Investigation ◽

Undrained Shear Strength ◽

Cohesive Soils ◽

Strength Parameters ◽

Additional Measurement ◽

Carpathian Foredeep ◽

Innovative Solution ◽

Undrained Shear

Abstract Soil strength parameters needed for the calculation of bearing capacity and stability are increasingly determined from field testing. This paper presents a method to determine the undrained shear strength cuWST of the soil, based on the Weight Sounding Test (WST). The innovative solution which allows for a significant reduction of equipment needed for geotechnical field investigation is presented. The proposed method is based on an additional measurement of the torque during testing. It then becomes possible to estimate the undrained shear strength, cuWST of the soil, using the correlation given in this paper. The research results presented in this paper were carried out on selected cohesive soils, Miocene clays from the Carpathian Foredeep.

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