Abstract
Hydraulic failure by heave is one of the most dangerous limit states in geotechnical engineering practice. Hence, the margins of safety associated to this failure mechanism have traditionally been quite high. Nowadays, with the advent of the Eurocodes, the approaches to verify heave failure have been substantially modified to take into account “partial” factors, as opposed to the traditional “global” safety factor. In the paper it is demonstrated that the two approaches given in the present version of Eurocode 7 do not provide a consistent evaluation of safety against failure by heave and may lead to both over-conservative and un-conservative design. An alternative approach is given to eliminate such inconsistencies, and to provide more reasonable levels of safety. Finally, two simple examples are presented to compare the different approaches and to highlight possible limitations in their use for design.
References
Bond AJ, Schuppener B, Scarpelli G, Orr TLL (2013) Eurocode 7: geotechnical design worked examples In: Proceedings workshop “Eurocode 7: geotechnical design”, Dublin
EN 1997-1:2003 (2003) Eurocode 7 geotechnical design—Part 1: general rules
Harr ME (1962) Groundwater and seepage. McGraw-Hill, New York City
Holtz RD, Kovacs WD (1981) An introduction to geotechnical engineering. Prentice Hall, New Jersey
Orr TLL (2005) Evaluation of uplift and heave designs to Eurocode 7. In: Proceedings of international workshop on evaluation of Eurocode 7, Trinity College, Dublin
SEEP/W GeoStudio (2007) GeoSlope international Ltd, Calgary
Simpson B, Morrison P, Yasuda S, Townsend B, Gazetas G (2009) State of the art report: analysis and design. In: Proceedings of 17th ICSMGE. Alexandria 4:2873–2929
Taylor DW (1948) Fundamental of soil mechanics. Wiley, Hoboken
Terzaghi K (1922) Der Grundbush an Stauwerken und seine Verhutung. Die Wasserkraft 17:445–449
Terzaghi K, Peck RB (1948) Soil mechanics in engineering practice. Wiley, Hoboken
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pane, V., Cecconi, M. & Napoli, P. Hydraulic Heave Failure in EC7: Suggestions for Verification. Geotech Geol Eng 33, 739–750 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-014-9834-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-014-9834-8