Stability and instability: Soft clay embankment foundations and offshore continental slopes

摘要

The first part of the paper reviews the stress paths imposed on soft clays by embankments and considers their influence on the undrained shear strengths mobilised in the field. The shortcomings of conventional design procedures are discussed, making a key distinction between single and multi-stage construction. New research with Hollow Cylinder Apparatus is used to highlight the foundations' anisotropic shear strength characteristics, and simplified parametric stability analyses are presented for the multi-stage case. Comments on stability monitoring by ground movement observation are offered before introducing the far less familiar, and less well understood, topic of large offshore landslides.