The Effect of Partial Drainage on the Short-Term Bearing Capacity of Saturated Clay Foundations
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 24, Issue 7
Abstract
Disregarding the partial drainage of saturated clay foundations during staged construction of a building would underestimate the calculated short-term bearing capacity of foundations, resulting in imposing an extra burden on clients due to prescribing soil improvement. This paper aims to investigate the effect of partial drainage of saturated clay foundations subjected to different loading patterns on the mechanical response. Therefore, two main stages, including determination of shear strength parameters from triaxial simulations and foundation analysis based on the acquired shear parameters, were considered. In triaxial models, a change in the consolidation phase was proposed to determine more realistic shear strength parameters in a way that reflects the partial consolidation through the staged construction. It was found that drainage during construction could significantly increase the short-term bearing capacity up to 70% in comparison with the unconsolidated undrained triaxial test condition. Moreover, a well-justified equation and stepwise method were proposed to estimate the short-term bearing capacity of clay foundations with respect to the partial drainage during construction.
Practical Applications
In civil engineering, there are several cases in which superstructures should be constructed over saturated clay foundations. Therefore, the bearing capacity of these foundations should be determined and controlled in short-term (end of construction) and long-term (during service life of the structure) conditions. Owing to the fact that during staged construction of superstructures, a sort of partial drainage occurs, estimating the short-term bearing capacity of saturated clay foundations using the parameters derived from the undrained unconsolidated triaxial test could be very conservative, resulting in imposing an extra burden on clients due to prescribing unnecessary soil improvement. This paper by a combination of triaxial and foundation analysis investigated the effect of partial drainage of saturated clay foundations subjected to different loading patterns on the mechanical response. An attempt was made to provide engineers and designers with an appropriate relationship and a stepwise method so that they could determine the short-term bearing capacity of foundations considering the partial drainage in the common geotechnical practices. The proposed approach is applicable for clayey foundations in which taking undisturbed samples is possible.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Notation
The following symbols are used in this paper:
- B
- width of the footings;
- C
- cohesion of soil;
- C′
- effective cohesion of soil;
- CD
- consolidated drained triaxial test;
- CU
- consolidated undrained triaxial test;
- Cu
- undrained shear strength of soil;
- cv
- coefficient of consolidation;
- E
- elastic modulus of soil;
- E50
- secant modulus of soil;
- e0
- initial void ratio of soil;
- G
- shear modulus of soil;
- H
- Thickness of clay layer;
- IF
- influence factor;
- k
- permeability of soil;
- mv
- coefficient of volume compressibility of soil;
- OCR
- over consolidation ratio of soil;
- p′
- mean normal effective stress;
- q
- deviatoric stress;
- qcu
- short-term bearing capacity calculated from the parameters of CU triaxial model;
- qpd
- short-term bearing capacity with respect to the partial drainage;
- qUU
- short-term bearing capacity without drainage;
- Tv
- time factor;
- U
- consolidation degree;
- UU
- unconsolidated undrained triaxial test;
- u
- pore water pressure;
- γ
- unit weight of the soil;
- φ
- internal angle of friction of soil;
- φ′
- effective internal friction angle of soil; and
- ν
- Poisson ratio of the soil.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 24 • Issue 7 • July 2024
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 13, 2023
Accepted: Jan 16, 2024
Published online: Apr 23, 2024
Published in print: Jul 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Sep 23, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Clays
- Drainage
- Foundation construction
- Foundation design
- Foundations
- Geomechanics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Irrigation engineering
- Load bearing capacity
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Materials engineering
- Saturated soils
- Shear strength
- Soft soils
- Soil dynamics
- Soil mechanics
- Soil stabilization
- Soils (by type)
- Strength of materials
- Water and water resources
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