Abstract:
One of the challenges in designing levees adjacent to the San Francisco Bay is filling on soft, highly compressible Young Bay Mud. This presentation will describe numerical modeling of stress history, undrained loading, consolidation, and fill staging for an approximately 16 foot high coastal levee embankment founded on an approximately 20-foot thick bay mud layer. Analyses were performed using the GeoStudio Slope /W, Seep /W, and Sigma /W software package. The presentation will also describe the interpretation of field and laboratory data to obtain design parameters. Of particular interest to local practitioners, the presentation will discuss the interpretation of stress history, undrained strength and consolidation parameters of the upper desiccated young bay mud “crust†at the project site. Results presented will illustrate important insights that can be gleaned from numerical soil mechanics modeling for understanding and designing embankments on soft soil layers.