Tutorial 8 Embankment Staging

• Embankment designer
• Advanced embankment staging
• Increasing embankment width
• Adding new embankment layers
• Removing embankment layers
• Choosing soil properties from published data
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Defining the Model

Start the Settle3D program.

Project Settings
Open the Project Settings dialog from the Analysis menu. Set the Stress units = Metric,
stress as kPa and the Settlement units = Centimeters as shown.

Click on the Stages tab. Change the Number of Stages to 11.

Click OK to close the dialog.

1-2
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Soil Properties
For this tutorial we will assume a 2 m layer of sand on top of 10 m of clay. Select Soil
Properties from the Soils menu. Change the name of Material 1 to Sand.

To choose a Unit Weight, click on the ‘choose material property’ icon to the left of the box
where the unit weight is entered. You will see a dialog that specifies some Unit Weights
from literature. Under Filter List, choose ‘Sand’ to show only the unit weights for sand.
Select ‘Poorly-graded sands’ as shown.

You can see at the top of the dialog that the unit weight is set to the midpoint of the given
range for poorly-graded sands (13.73 kN/m3). This is fine so click the OK button.

Back in the Soil Properties dialog, you will see that the unit weight for sand is set to the
value of 13.73 that you just chose.

For Primary Consolidation, set the Material Type to Linear. If you click the icon to choose
values for mv and filter the materials to show only sand, then you will see that there are no
suggested values for sand.

Click Cancel and use the default value in the Soil Properties dialog. The dialog should now
look like this:

1-3
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click on the tab for Soil Property 2. Change the name to Clay. For Unit Weight, click the icon
to show typical values and filter to show only the Clay values. Choose ‘Clays – typical,
normally consolidated’ as shown.

Click OK.

For Primary Consolidation, click the icon to choose a value for Cc. Filter the values for Clay
and choose ‘Normally consolidated, medium sensitive clays’.

1-4
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click OK. There are no data available for Cr so leave the default value of 0.1.

Choose a value for the void ratio by clicking on the icon next to e0. Filter the list to show
only clays, select Sandy Clay and click OK.

You Soil Properties dialog should now look like this:

1-5
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click OK to close the Soil Properties dialog.

Soil Layers
Select Soil Layers from the Properties menu. Change the thickness of the first soil layer to 2.
Click the button for Insert Layer Below. Set the thickness of this layer to 10 as shown.

Click OK to close the dialog.

Embankment Loading
Now that we have defined the soil strata, it is time to build the embankment. We will
1-6
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

simulate the construction history of the embankment by first building it upwards, then
extending it horizontally, and then gradually removing it.

Initial Embankment Construction

Select Add Embankment from the Loads menu. You will see the Embankment Designer
dialog. Change the Number of Layers to 3. Set the Near End Angle and Far End Angle to 70
degrees. We want to add the three layers in three different stages, so change the Stage for
Layer 2 to Stage 2 and the Stage for Layer 3 to Stage 3. The dialog should look like this:

Leave all other parameters as default values and click OK to close the dialog.

You will now be prompted to enter the near point for the embankment centre line. Enter 0
−50 and hit Enter. Now you are prompted to enter the far point. Enter 0 50 and hit Enter.
You should now see an embankment 100 m long as shown. You may need to zoom out in
the Plan View. Click the Zoom All button (or press the F2 function key) to see the entire
embankment.

1-7
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

To see the settlements caused by the embankment, we can add a query line. From the
Query menu, select Add Query Line. Leave the default query line properties as shown:

Click OK and you will now have to enter the start and finish points for the query line. Enter
−20 0 and hit Enter. Now type 20 0 and hit Enter. You will see the compute progress
indicator. After a few seconds, you should see the query line with settlement results
contoured in the 3D view. Rotate the 3D view (by holding down the left mouse button while
moving the mouse) and zoom in (by spinning the middle mouse wheel) and you should see
the settlement profile as shown for Stage 1.

1-8
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click on the tab for Stage 2 and you will see the second layer of the embankment has been
added and the settlement has increased. Stage 3 shows further construction and further
settlement. The Plan View gives the minimum and maximum settlement along the query
line (if you don’t see it, right click on the query line, choose Query Display Options and
check the box to display minimum and maximum values).

You may now want to save this model by going to File → Save As, before continuing with
the tutorial.

Widening the embankment

We can now simulate the widening of the embankment by using the Advanced options in
the Embankment Designer. Right click on the embankment and choose Embankment
Properties. You will now see the Embankment Designer again.

Click on the Advanced button, and you will see the Advanced Embankment Staging dialog.
Select the Advanced Staging checkbox. Click the Add button. You will now see that you have
the ability to add to the left and/or right of the embankment. You may want to move this
1-9
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

dialog so that you can see the Embankment Designer at the same time.

We built the original embankment in Stages 1, 2 and 3. We will now widen it in Stages 4, 5
and 6. Change the Stage to Stage 4. Change the Layer to 1. Under Add to left, enter 5 as
shown.

This will now extend the bottom layer of the embankment 5 m to the left in Stage 4.

Click the Add button two more times and fill in the dialog to extend the other two layers in
Stages 5 and 6. The dialog should look like this.

1 - 10
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click OK to close the Advanced Embankment Staging dialog. You will now be back in the
Embankment Designer. You can see how the three layers have been extended to the left.

1 - 11
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click OK. Settle3D will take a few seconds to calculate the new settlement information.

Now click through the stages and observe the construction of the embankment and changes
in calculated settlement through the stages. Stage 5 is shown below.

1 - 12
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Embankment Top Layer

Now that the embankment has been extended, we want to add another layer. From the
Loads menu, select Edit and choose Properties. Click on the embankment and hit Enter. You
will see the Embankment Designer once again. Change the number of layers to 4. For the
fourth layer, change the Stage to Stage 7 (recall that we extended the base in stages 4, 5
and 6). You can see that the top layer automatically extends over the original embankment
width plus the extension.

Click OK to close the dialog.

After a few seconds, click on the tab for Stage 7. You should see a maximum settlement of
47.7 cm.

Embankment Removal
We can now remove the embankment layer by layer and observe the effect on settlement.
Right click on the embankment and choose Embankment Properties. The main Embankment
Designer allows you to remove the entire embankment at some stage. However, since we
want to dismantle the embankment layer by layer, we need to click the Advanced button.
1 - 13
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

In the Advanced Embankment Staging dialog, click the Add button. Recall that we added the
top layer in Stage 7, so we will remove it in Stage 8. Change the Stage to Stage 8. Leave the
Layer as Layer 4. Check the box for Remove. The dialog will now look like this:

Click the Add button 3 more times and remove layers 3, 2 and 1 in stages 9, 10 and 11
respectively.

1 - 14
Settle3D v.4.0 Tutorial Manual Tutorial 8: Embankment Staging

Click OK to return to the Embankment Designer. Click OK to close the Embankment

Designer.

After a few seconds, click through stages 8-11 and observe the change in embankment
geometry and settlement as layers are removed. The plot below shows the results in Stage
11, when the entire embankment has been removed.

You can see that the calculated settlement for this stage is 32.1 cm. The settlement is
greater than zero, even though there is no load. This is because the clay layer is hysteretic,
i.e. it is stiffer during unloading, than during loading (Cr < Cc), therefore there is some
permanent settlement even after the load is removed.

This concludes the tutorial. Save this model by going to File → Save. You may now exit the
Settle3D program.

1 - 15