THE COMPARISON OF THE SOFT CLAY SETTLEMENT UNDER AN EMBANKMENT LOAD USING FIELD INSTRUMENTATION AND EMPIRICAL FORMULATION

Settlement of embankments on soft soils is a significant problem in geotechnical engineering to maintain pavements, buildings, and other facilities on them. The problem that often arises is not being able to predict the magnitude of consolidation compression accurately, this occurs due to uncertainty in field conditions, laboratory testing, and data interpretation, as well as assumptions made in the development of 1-D consolidation theory. Based on the causes of inaccurate settlements predictions, it is necessary to carry out research on a better method for predicting embankment's settlement on soft soil. To obtain the correct method, a study was conducted by comparing and examining the consolidation settlement of embankments built on soft soil using theoretical calculations and field measurement results. The process involved monitoring the settlements using 25 plate measurement data in embankment preloading for housing and building construction over the very soft clay. The results showed the compression parameter, especially Cc, is very influential on the compression ratio, and the Cc value based on the empirical formula of Bowles (1989) turned out to be the most suitable for the actual compression results in the field with a compression ratio between 0.6-1.1 and confidence of level 90%.