Geotechnical Engineering > Soil Mechanics

To understand what liquefaction is, we must first understand shear stress in soils, which in turn means, the strength of soil… Load carrying capacity of any material arises from its shear strength. Soils, rocks, which carry our structures are no exception to this rule. The greater a foundation material has shear strength, the better it can support our structures with less settlement. Shear strength is a result of how well the particles of a material stick to each other, and, the resistance they provide when they are made to slide over each other. In other words, Shear strength = The resistance provided particles sticking to each other + The resistance […] Read More

In this post we will cover various good practices to follow during subsurface investigation, which forms the basis when preparing geotechnical reports. Read More

It is not possible to describe or even summarize foundation design principles in a single post. So first of all, we refer the readers to other posts we made in Geotechnical engineering and foundations. Below we did not distinguish shallow or deep foundations. We will only list some major points to consider below: Bearing capacity Settlement, such as elastic settlement for all soils and primary and secondary consolidation settlement for clays Potential for deep seated failure, when a weak layer can be present beneath a stronger layer Frost heave cycle The soil parameters are reliable to the degree of the reliability of tests to determine them. The engineer must use […] Read More