A comprehensive soil characteristics study and finite element modeling of soil-structure behavior in Tuzla area

ABSTRACT: Determination of soil characteristics is important for the design of foundations. The magnitude of settlement, bearing capacity, heave and various other engineering behaviors should be experimentally determined or initially predicted from models, before the design of structures. In order to assess the available in situ and experimental data and to model soil-structure interaction for local soils, Tuzla is chosen as the study area, which is the most disputable area in North Cyprus, regarding the soil formations and soil-structure interactions. The study consists of four phases: collection of all the available in situ and laboratory data and deriving soil profiles for each parcel in the area; using well known correlations to predict engineering parameters; finite element modeling of the soil-structure interaction and establishing a mathematical model for settlement. A database of the engineering parameters of soils in Tuzla area is formed based on 43 boreholes, and in situ and laboratory experimental data available. Borelogs were plotted and the soil profiles for each parcel of the Tuzla area, and water table profile for the entire area were obtained using RockWare. The SPT-N values were used to correlate with the engineering parameters, including the shear strength parameters and the bearing capacity using the methods available in NovoSPT. The bearing capacity was determined from the available correlations in the software as well as manually using well known methods, such as Burland and Burbidge (1985) and Bowels and Meyerhof (1976) correlations. In the soil-structure interaction part of the thesis, square mat foundations were modeled in different sizes, and placed at varying depths in the soil profile for the worst borehole location of BH-24 in Parcel No. XXIV 50 W2 Finite element method is implemented by PLAXIS 2D for the axis-symmetric case and using Mohr-Coulomb criterion. Elastic settlements and consolidation settlements at different time intervals, up to 50 years were studied. It was concluded that the bearing capacity should only be found in relation to consolidation settlement in the region. In the final phase, an exponential relationship is proposed for the prediction of total settlements for this specific location based on bearing capacity, foundation size, depth, and time. To generalize this relationship for the whole area, further research is required using all the borehole data and the profiles of the other parcels in the region. Keywords: SPT correlations, Bearing capacity, Settlement, Soil-structure interaction. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………