The construction of an embankment on soft soil with a high groundwater level leads to an increase in pore pressure. As a result of this undrained behaviour, the effective stress remains low and intermediate consolidation periods have to be adopted in order to construct the embankment safely. During consolidation the excess pore pressures dissipate so that the soil can obtain the necessary shear strength to continue the construction process.
This tutorial concerns the construction of a road embankment in which the mechanism described above is analysed in detail. In the analysis two new calculation options are introduced, namely a consolidation analysis and the calculation of a safety factor by means of a safety analysis (phi/c-reduction). It also involves the modelling of drains to speed up the consolidation process.
The attached *.p3dlog file contains all the commands to generate the model. With a Bentley Geotechnical SELECT Entitlement [GSE] licence, you can use the commands runner to open the *.p3dlog file and to execute all commands in one go, see also this instruction.
PLAXIS 3D Tutorial 05: Phased excavation of a shield tunnel [Tutorials]
PLAXIS 3D Tutorial 07: Rapid drawdown analysis [Tutorials]