Computing Assignment Scenario B

Introduction
Computing tools are widely used in the field of Geotechnical Engineering to allow a more detailed analysis with greater efficiency. As an introduction to engaging computation analysis with soil mechanics, a series of 1-D settlement calculations will be made on the given scenario at different sub-layer thicknesses to explore its impact on accuracy. Furthermore, through investigating the variations of settlement at different soil depths, the behaviour of soil settlement and the depth of maximum differential settlement will be identified.

Scenario and Analytical Solutions

The following case was employed to study the accuracy of numerical analysis: A rectangular building is to be constructed on a site where the soil profile consists of 3m of dense sand overlying a 5m thick layer with an over-consolidation ratio of 1, which overlies rock. The soil properties of the clay are Cc = 0.25, Cr = 0.05, sat = 18 kN/m3, for the sand sat = 18 kN/m3, and the water table is 2 m below the soil surface. Determine the settlements when a stress of 100 kPa is applied by the building over an area of 10m 5 m on the soil surface. It is assumed that there is no occurrence of settlement in the sand layer and Gs=2.65. Taking the settlement at centre of the layer as the average settlement, the analytically obtained settlement values are 0.159703m, 0.081826m, and 0.0778407m for centre settlement, corner settlement, and total differential settlement respectively and will be used to compare with numerically obtained values.

Results
The following graph illustrates the effect of sub-layer thickness in relation to settlement calculations. Sub-layer thickness is controlled by varying the number of sub-layers within the total soil thickness.

Figure 1: Numerically Calculated Settlements vs. Number of Sub-layers

Through visual inspection, it could be observed that the numerically solved settlements at the centre and the corner of the rectangular foundation and its corresponding differential settlements initially oscillates with high amplitude then experiences a gradual damping effect towards a constant value with the increase in number of sub-layers. The numerically solved settlement values throughout the entire depth were 0.172274m, 0.086309m, and 0.085695m for centre, corner and differential settlement respectively which were all greater than the analytically solved values by approximately 5-10%.

The settlement per soil depth allows qualitative analysis of the behavior of settlement throughout the soil depth. The number of sub-layers used was 1000. Under the assumption of 1-D settlement theory, the settlement has a linear relationship with depth and hence the average settlement is at the centre of the layer. However Figure 2 indicates an exponential decrease in Figure 2: Settlement vs Depth (m) settlements for both centre and corner with increasing depth. This explains the higher settlement values which were obtained numerically in comparison to the analytical solutions. For differential settlement, the maximum has occurred at the top of the clay layer and exponentially decreased with depth. Noting that vertical stress change under rectangular load is given by: p2tan-1lbzr3+lbzr31r12+1r22 where r12=l2+z2, r22=b2+z2, and r32=l2+b2+z2, the dominance of z increases with soil depth which effectively reduces the difference in vertical pressure change below the centre and corner of the rectangular foundation. Hence, the convergence of centre settlement and corner settlement could be observed in Figure 2.

Error Analysis
The following figure illustrates the percentage of error within computational method respective to the actual differential settlement calculated analytically. The percentage of error is proportional to the degree of oscillation in which Figure 3: Percentage in Error vs. Number of Sub-layers the settlement experiences with varying number of sub-layers. As calculation of the total settlement involves integrating the settlement curve under its layer depth, estimation of the area with large sub-layer intervals would result in high inaccuracy. However, increasing the number of sub-layers would allow the solution to be closer to its optimum value. Eventually, with the increasing number of sub-layers, the percentage of error approaches 0% where at least 200 sub-layers are required for the present settlement scenario to obtain accurate settlement calculations. Furthermore, by carefully examining the graph, a general trend is identified where the percentage of error approaches its minimum where the numbers of sub-layers are in factors of 8; the total depth of soil. This is ideal since dividing the sub-layers in such manner maintains symmetry when calculating the settlements.