Analysis of settlement monitoring data to assess the state of primary and secondary consolidation of soft organic soil deposits

Abstract

Organic soil deposits under road embankments may cause consolidation settlement problems during the serviceability stage. It is not feasible to design road traces on such soil deposits using the traditionally used most unfavourable ground conditions. Instead the most probable ground conditions are used in the initial design and this approach is referred to as the observational approach. The risks associated with using most probable soil properties are managed by reviewing the initial design through the analysis of the observational data obtained during the construction stage. In this regards, analysis tools to assess the stability of the embankment during construction stage and the estimation of the degree of consolidation during ground improvement phase are extremely important. Even though there are large number of analytical methods available to use for the data analysis, not much research is done to identify the tools relevant to the organic soft soils found in Sri Lanka. This research is aimed at investigation of the analytical tools that can be used in the analysis of settlement monitoring data obtained during the implementation of the observational approach for construction of the road embankments over the soft soil deposits in Sri Lanka.