Embankments on Organic Soils





Preface

Development of regions and countries is often associated with the necessity of civil engineering works on soft soils. This happens more and more frequently be- cause of earlier utilization of areas with better foundation conditions.

The most troublesome of soft soils are organic soils, mainly due to their high compressibility, much higher than in mineral soils and very low shear strength. The large diversity of organic soils with respect to their origin as well as properties make their classification, testing and engineering prediction of behaviour very difficult.

That is why engineers try, in general, to avoid constructing on deep layers of organic soils; if forced by the necessities, they manage with light structures, e.g. embank- ments or low buildings.



The authors of this book have been involved in a joint research project of test embankments on organic soils carried out in the North-Western part of Poland by the Swedish Geotechnical Institute and the Department of Geotechnics of the Warsaw Agricultural University. These studies prompted us to write the present book.

The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the help of the Polish Local Land Reclamation Office WZMUW in Pila in the performance of field works.

The authors are very grateful to professor Sven Hansbo at the Chalmers Univer- sity of Gothenburg, who has reviewed this book and who has given many valuable comments on the text.

The authors also want to express their gratitude to the Swedish Road Adminis- tration, for them letting us use their experience and publications on the subject.

The authors will also greatly acknowledge the work done by Mr Eugeniusz Koda, making the computation of examples in chapter 9, and Mr Ryszard Zycnowicz, making most of the drawing, both working at the Warsaw Agricultural University, and to Mr Jan Lindgren, the Swedish Geotechnical Institute, who has done the large job of reviewing and editing the whole book.

Spring 1996

The authors



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