Geotechnical Modelling to Appraise the Tavira (Portugal) New Fishing Harbor’s Soft Soils Compressibility

Abstract

Demographic growth has led to the need for construction in geotechnically less favorable urban and coastal locations that have previously been disregarded in favor of better-off ones. One of the features that conditions the construction in those places is the presence of soft soils due to their low strength and high compressibility. Several geotechnical studies have revealed that the soft soils existing in the foundation of Tavira new fishing harbor, present some geotechnical challenges, one of the main being the excessive settlements that are expected. One of the ground improvement solutions considered in the project is the application of prefabricated vertical drains (PVD) along with the use of preloads. This paper presents a numerical model that was previously validated for a similar geotechnical context, to evaluate the behaviour of the Tavira soft soils. The geomechanical validation was based on a well-documented case study, including monitoring data, where PVD as well as preloads were applied. The behaviour predicted for the Tavira new fishing harbor is compared with the one from the validation case study and the results obtained are discussed.