Trial of geotechnical asset management for highway embankments constructed on soft clay foundations

摘要

This paper describes a trial of geotechnical asset management for highway embankments placed on very soft clayey grounds at Ebet-su, Hokkaido in Japan. The highway was constructed 30 years ago and is still settling year by year requiring a considerable cost of maintenance. The paper consists of (ⅰ) characterization of the ground conditions at the sites, (ⅱ) the class B predictions of the mechanical behaviour of embankments during construction works employing a soil/water coupled finite element code, (ⅲ) predictions of long-term settlement of the embankments based on the information obtained at the stage (ⅱ), (ⅳ) estimates of maintenance cost of the embankments based on the computed long-term settlement and (ⅴ) verification of the proposed method of geotechnical asset management by comparing the maintenance cost estimated based on the above stated method and the maintenance cost actually needed in the past 30 years.