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around the world. Large areas of Canada, Eastern Europe, China and the USA are blanketed by soils that are prone to collapse.
A wide variety of sediments are considered as being collapsible
soils, some examples include lake sediments, loess (wind-blown silts), quickclays and volcanic ash.
An ever increasing number of people live in regions underlain by
collapsible soils. It is therefore essential that the behaviour of these materials is understood so that the hazards posed by them can be minimised.
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have an open packing and which forms a metastable state that can collapse to form a closer packed, more stable structure of significantly reduced volume.
geotechnical significance.
For example, a volcanic ash is formed through very different processes to that of a quick clay but both are recognized as being collapsible soils. As such, it is impossible to discuss the formation of every collapsible soil here but the formation of loess, the most common of the collapsible soils, is detailed below:
Loess is a fine-grained (silt) material that has been transported and
deposited by the wind. The sediments come from glacial outwash plains (where glaciers deposit particles of silt and clay) or from desert areas that have little vegetation to anchor small particles. Prevailing wind patterns blowing across these environments can produce thick deposits of loess downwind of the area.
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Loess
Parma*
Granitic sands
Kalahari sands
They are a geologically young or recently altered deposit They have an open structure They consist of silt and fine sand size grains They possess a high void ratio They display high porosity (n > 50%)
Mineralogy
Loess dominated by 20-60 m quartz particles
Quartz is most abundant, feldspar is also present Clay types: mica>montmorillinite (average 15%)>illite and kaolinite (average 5%)
bonds provide the means by which grains are kept apart from each other.
There are numerous types of bond: clay bridges, clay bonds,
carbonates & negative pore water pressures are the most common.
It is when these bonds are destroyed (through either soil
loading, soil saturation or a combination of both) that the collapse of the soil occurs.
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Void Spaces
As grains are not in contact, the geotechnical behaviour of the soil is controlled by the structure and strength of the holding bonds
Open packing of grains (honeycomb structure), collapse will cause packing to become closed.
accumulation of deposits on top of the soil or through more dynamic processes such as an earthquake or construction work.
Wetting refers to an increase in the moisture content of the soil,
normally from a partially saturated state to one approaching full saturation. Wetting can be caused by natural events (severe rainfall event, groundwater rise etc.) or by human activity.
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additional wetting are introduced. These sources (listed below) may increase the moisture content of the soil and ultimately trigger failure.
Irrigation Changes Septic
systems
Leakage
Most leakages are confined to the top few meters of soil only but a long, sustained leak can wet the soil to a considerable depth. Such wetting can lead to large scale collapses.
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The collapse of a soil represents a rearrangement of the constituent grains into a denser state of packing. In other words, the volume of the soil is reduced. Where wetting is the trigger, collapse usually occurs suddenly. Their high potential for failure creates significant geohazards for people living on, or close to, collapsible soils:
Structures built immediately on top of failing soils are likely to be destroyed. The dramatic alteration of the soil structure will cause foundations to fail. Depending on the topography of the area, collapse can lead to landsliding. In the case of quick clays, liquefaction can lead to the development of mud flows. If the soil collapses into a body of water, tsunamis can be generated. This was the case in Rissa, Norway (April 1978)
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The diagram above illustrates how the open packing and general structure of the soil is lost upon collapse.
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how the void ratio of a soil is lost as a trigger mechanism acts upon it. Note how the effect of wetting is more dramatic than that caused by loading.
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IMPROVING METASTABLE LOESS GROUND Ian F. Jefferson,1 Alena Klukanov.,2 Dimcho Evstatiev3, Roumyana Angelova4 and Ian J. Smalley5.
17 Modelling the Collapse of Metastable Loess Soils - H. Miller, Y. Djerbib, I.F. Jefferson and I.J. Smalley
This indicates how collapsibility potential varies, maximum collapse more likely to occur at moisture contents corresponding to higher void ratio.
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IMPROVING METASTABLE LOESS GROUND Ian F. Jefferson,1 Alena Klukanov.,2 Dimcho Evstatiev3, Roumyana Angelova4 and Ian J. Smalley5.
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Original height
through laboratory testing. The procedure involves single and double oedometer tests on undisturbed soil samples. (See http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/~swan/courses/53139/difficult.pdf for further information about these tests.)
Once determined, the coefficient of collapsibility can be used (in
conjunction with the table below) to indicate the potential severity of a collapse should it occur.
Collapse % (Ccol x 100) 0-1 1-5 5 - 10 10 - 20
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Severity of Problem No problem Moderate trouble Trouble Severe trouble Very severe trouble
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1.
The void ratio of a collapsible soil is reduced from 0.7 to 0.3 upon failure. What coefficient of collapsibility does the soil have? The same soil had a thickness (height) of 10 m prior to collapse. What is the thickness of the soil now that failure has taken place? How severe are the troubles caused by such a collapse likely to be?
2.
3.
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that were derived from sediments that were shed from the steep valleysides.
These soil deposits are highly susceptible to hydro-
compaction.
The Terrace development included 13 two-story
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Thick collapsible soils were previously mapped and identified at the site -Figure 1. The wall constructed behind the development was built for rockfall and debris flow mitigation.
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months of the first units completed and sold, collapse of the soil was causing settlement of the back concrete retaining-wall foundations, which caused deflection of interior beams (Figure 3), a host of interior cracks and structural offsets, and distortion of windows and doors (Figure 4).
Compaction grouting was used to structurally lift the
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concrete retaining wall at basement/garage level. Note deflection of ceiling beam due to settlement of the wall.
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poor drainage of the nearly flat, rock-in area that is adjacent to the heavy concrete basement retaining wall needed for garages. Most significantly, note the lack of rain gutters at the roof.
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done to mitigate against the associated risk? The mitigation methods that are applicable to collapsible soils are as follows:
Structure considerations Site features Collapsible soil avoidance Ground Modification
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1. 2. 3.
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IMPROVING METASTABLE LOESS GROUND Ian F. Jefferson,1 Alena Klukanov.,2 Dimcho Evstatiev3, Roumyana Angelova4 and Ian J. Smalley5.
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produces large quantities of silt. After being transported by the wind, these silts are deposited to form substantial thicknesses of loess.
Loess deposits in China are up to 340 m thick and cover an
area greater than 600,000 km2. This is equivalent to about 6% of the total area of the country.
the greatest bulk accumulation of loess on earth. Everything in this region is yellow because of the loess: the land, the homes and the water. The Yellow River is so-called because of the loess sediment load that it carries.
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geochemistry) are some of the hazards that the loess soils create.
The following slides highlight the effects of some of these
hazards
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A loess avalanche in Shanxi, China which killed 23 people due to structural & foundation failure of small houses on the slope & at the foot.
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Loess Plateau. Many different landslide types develop in the loess soils, the diagram below illustrates these.
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800 people were killed by landslides triggered during heavy storms in August 1979 alone.
Within a single county of the plateau, more than 2500 events were recorded during the rainy season of 1984.
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events.
Remedial measures such as consolidation and structural
reinforcement rarely work in these soils, piling into non-collapsible layers is an expensive (so rarely used) solution.
The problematic behaviour of loess is well understood in China.
Because of this, engineering zonation classifications have been developed for use in regional planning (see next slide).
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mitigation methods as listed in Table -1 are used if the soil lies in the collapsibility potential of low risk zones.
Any sort of heavy construction activity is avoided in
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Another good paper on use of Geo-composites as preventive & remedial measure against collapsible soils (for personal ref.)
IAEG2006 Paper number 157 - The Geological Society of
London 2006 The geo-composite method for reinforcing building foundations - V.I. OSIPOV, S.D. FILIMONOV, O.N. EREMINA & N.A. ROUMYANTSEVA
The paper describes in detail, the geo-composite
method and its rigorous application to prevent and rectify various foundation failures in Moscow, Russia posing a risk from loess deposits.
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Genesis and Properties of Collapsible Soils E. Derbyshire, T. Dijkstra and I. Smalley Nato ASI Series Kluwer Academic Publishers Geological Hazards F. Bell E & FN Spon Loess - Geomorphological Hazards and Processes S. Okuda, A. Rapp and Z. Linyan Catena Supplement 20 Earths Dynamic Processes - Ninth Edition W. Hamblin and E. Christiansen Prentice Hall Geological Hazards in the Loess Terrain, with Particular Reference to the Loess Regions of China E. Derbyshire Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 54, pp 231-260, 2001
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Evaluation, Design and Mitigation of Project Sites in Collapsible Soil Areas in Western Colorado
S. Palawak
http://www.hpgeotech.com/Steve_Paper.htm
53:139 Foundation Engineering, The University of Iowa, Spring Semester, 2002, Foundations on Difficult Soils
http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/~swan/courses/53139/difficult.pdf
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THANK YOU!
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