layer

Table 2. Soil parameters for Boston Blue Clay

B1
B2
C1
C2
D
E1
E2



 




 






19
2
15.8
0.522
8.34
1.35

10.4
0.652
4.6 3.07
1.08 0.85

6.3
0.870
2.25 1.77
0.80 0.65

The inclination  of the critical state line is significantly steeper than the MC-failure line to prevent the
overprediction of horizontal deformation. One gets
this inclination by choosing a  -value, which yields
to !  
  . The overprediction of horizontal
displacements is well known in the framework of the
classical critical state mechanics. Moreover the value
for    is chosen to uncouple the elastic strain.
This is done to reduce the magnitude of the horizontal displacements as well.
The high -values (Tab. 2) indicate that creep
will not be so important because about half of the
BBC layer has an -value of at least two, decreasing at the bottom of the layer to a value near one. For
that type of soil the amount of creep will be small in
comparison to the rest of the settlements.
Figs. 4 to 6 show the calculation results and the
measurements. The solid lines indicate the measurements, the dashed lines are the results from the SSCmodel and the dotted lines are the analysis with the
SS-model. In Fig. 4 one can recognize that consolidation is not over after the measurement period of 
days, because the settlement curves still have an inclination. That fact is supported by Fig. 5, one can see
that in the center of the BBC there is still a pore-waterpressure of around

  after  days. The
SSC-model slightly overestimates in the most cases
the vertical displacements. Moreover the calculated
pore-water-pressures are slightly higher then those
measured. The horizontal displacements are overestimated as well. In most cases the SS-model matches
the measurements better, especially for the deep settlements. So it seems that if there are high  values in the soft soils the SSC-model is not so useful.

7.1
1.304
1.44
0.60

E3

17.7
1.5
7.8
1.957
1.25 1.21 1.18
0.57 0.57 0.56

F1

F2

F3

5.9
1.522
1.16 1.14 1.11
0.56 0.56 0.55

ing parameters are for all 9 sub-layers the same.














 
  
 

The other parameters used for the calculations are

given in Tab. 3. All parameters were taken from the
literature (Larsson 1997). The ratio between the modified soil parameters is 

  and 


.
The inclination of the critical state line  is here chosen to match the !  -value correctly, as well.
DATA
SSC
SS

10
620 Days
0

Elevation [m]

-10

Sand
A
B
C

-20

D
E

-30
F
-40
Till

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

Horizontal Displacements (m)

DATA
SSC
SS

10
2000 Days
0

-10

Elevation [m]

3.2 Ska Edeby test embankment

The test embankment was built on the test site of Ska
Edeby about 
 west of Stockholm in the year
1961. The embankment has a height of
  with a
crest width of   and slopes

. The fill was instrumented with piezometers and settlement markers
at different locations under and outside the fill. The
soil under the embankment consists of soft clay with
a thickness of
  on top of till or rock. The soft
clay layer is divided into  sub-layers with different
compressibility parameters and s. The follow-

Sand
A
B
C

-20

D
E

-30
F
-40
Till

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

0,0

0,1

Horizontal Displacements (m)

Figure 6. Horizontal displacements in different sections

layer
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H

Table 3. Soil parameters for Ska Edeby









14.2
14.4

16.1

 







 

 













0.106
0.091
0.083

Den Haan, E. J. (1994). Vertical Compression of Soils. Ph. D.

thesis, Delft University.
Garlanger, J. E. (1972). The consolidation of soils
exhibiting creep under constant effective stress.
Geotechnique 22(1), 7178.
Janbu, N. (1985). 25th rankine lecture: Soil models in offshore engineering. G e otechnique 35(3), 239281.
Ladd, C. C., A. J. Whittle, and D. E. Legaspi (1994). Stressdeformation behaviour of an embankement on boston
blue clay. In Vertical and Horizontal Deformations of
Foundations and Embankments Proceedings of Settlement 94, College Station Texas, pp. 17301759.
Larsson, R. (1997). Consolidation of soft soils. Report 29,
Swedish Geotechnical Institute.
Sekiguchi, H. (1977). Rheological characteristics of clays. In
Proceedings 9th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Volume 1, Tokyo,
pp. 289292.
Stolle, D. F. E., P. A. Vermeer, and P. G. Bonnier (1997).
A soft soil model and experiences with two integration
schemes. Numerical Models in Geomechanics, 123128.
Vermeer, P. A. and H. P. Neher (1999). A soft soil model that
accounts for creep. In R. B. J. Brinkgreve (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Symposium Beyond 2000 in
Computational Geotechnics, Amsterdam, pp. 249261.
Balkema.
Vermeer, P. A., D. F. E. Stolle, and P. G. Bonnier (1997). From
classical theory of secondary compression to modern
creep. In J.-X.Yuan (Ed.), Computer Methods and Advances in Geomechanics, Volume 4, Wuhan, pp. 2469
2478. Balkema.

14.1
2
1.2





0.076

1.0

0.069

As shown in Tab. 3 the soft clay is almost normally consolidated ( 
). Only the upper 
have a high  value caused by a crust. Hence, a
large amount of creep is to be expected. Furthermore
it demonstrates that the settlements as well as the
pore-pressures and the horizontal displacements were
strongly underestimated by the SS-model whereas the
results from the SSC-model and the measured data
agree fairly well.
4 CONCLUSIONS
After a brief introduction of the SS-model and the
SSC-model two test embankments were used for
back-analysis. The results show that for overconsolidated soils the SSC-model has no advantages compared to the SS-model, because in such case creep
doesnt play an important role. However in normally
consolidated soft clays like in Ska Edeby creep becomes significant and the SSC-model exceeds the SSmodel. This should be kept in mind when simulating
the construction of any building on soft soils.

DATA
SSC
SS

Time [years]
0,0

5,0

10,0

15,0

20,0

-0,1
-0,3

Settlements [m]

-0,5
-0,7

REFERENCES

-0,9

Adachi, T. and F. Oka (1982). Constitutive equation for normally consolidated clays based on elasto-viscoplasticity.
Soils and Foundations 22, 5770.

-25,0 -20,0 -15,0 -10,0 -5,0

-0,02

0,0

0,02

0,06

0,10

Bjerrum, L. (1967). 7th rankine lecture: Engineering geology of norwegian normally-consolidated marine clays as
related to settlements of buildings. G e otechnique 17(1),
81118.

A
B
-2

-4

-6

-8

-10

Burland, J. B. (1965). The yielding and dilation of clay (correspondence). Geotechnique 15(2), 211214.

-12

Burland, J. B. (1967). Deformation of Soft Clay. Ph. D. thesis,

Cambridge University.

-14

Elevation [m]

Borja, R. I. and E. Kavaznjian (1985). A constitutive

model for the stress-strain-time behaviour of wet clays.
Geotechnique 35(3), 283298.
Brinkgreve, R. B. J. and P. A. Vermeer (Eds.) (1998). PLAXIS
Finite Element Code for Soil and Rock Analyses. Rotterdam: A.A.Balkema.
Buismann, K. (1936). Results of long duration settlement
tests. In Proceedings 1st International Conference on
Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Volume 1,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 103107.

Excess Pore Pressure [kPa]

Butterfield, R. (1979). A natural compression law for

soils (an advance on e-log p)(technical note).
Geotechnique 29(4), 469480.

Horizontal Displacement [m]

Figure 7. Time-Settlement-Curve; Pore-pressure distribution after 10 years and horizontal displacements after 20 years