Necessary Redundancy in Geotechnical Engineering

Abstract

The causes of geotechnical engineering failures are listed and discussed. Many of these could have been prevented or damages mitigated if redundancy had been used in design and construction. Redundancy is defined in special terms applicable to geotechnical engineering. How redundancy can and should be used in preliminary exploration, soil borings, laboratory testing, analysis, design, and construction is discussed. Eight cases of failure are discussed and analyzed in which lack of redundancy led to the failures. In each case it is shown how redundancy in at least one of the forms discussed could have prevented failure.