Embankment Design on Soft Clays

Abstract

A new design procedure for stage‐constructed embankments on soft clays is developed. The critical‐state theory is applied and the plastic behavior of normally consolidated clays is taken into account. In the stage construction of an embankment the major concern is to control shear stresses induced in the clay body. To keep the shear stresses below the critical‐state line an intermediate line is constructed and the effective stress states attained by the soil element during undrained loading stages are kept below the intermediate line. The construction of the intermediate line allows a sufficient factor of safety against shear failure at each stage of construction. The procedure inherits the condition that automatically satisfies the bearing capacity consideration and enables the designer to optimize the length of consolidation pause periods. In this paper the procedure is applied for both isotropically normally consolidated and anisotropically normally consolidated soft clays, and the results are correlated.