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 lesson concerns the construction of a road embankment in which the mechanism described above is analysed in detail. In the analysis three new calculation options are introduced, namely a consolidation analysis, an updated mesh analysis and the calculation of a safety factor by means of a safety analysis (phi/c-reduction).
This exercise requires a PLAXIS 2D Advanced or PLAXIS 2D Ultimate license.
The attached *.p2dxlog 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 *.p2dxlog file and to execute all commands in one go, see also this instruction.
PLAXIS 2D Tutorial 06: Dry excavation using a tie back wall [Tutorials]
PLAXIS 2D Tutorial 07: Dry excavation using a tie back wall - ULS [Tutorials]
PLAXIS 2D Tutorial 09: Excavation and dewatering [Tutorials]
Safety analysis and Updated Mesh [Tips and Tricks]
Automatically generated cross-sections of embankments [API / Python scripting - PLAXIS]