Introduction

J. Hartldn, Swedish Geotechnical Institute

W. Wolski, Department of Geotechnics, Warsaw Agricultural University

The purpose of this book is to introduce up to date knowledge of how to construct

embankments on organic soil.
Organic soil is a conception, which involves several types of soil from pure or-
ganic forms as peat and gyttja to transition forms towards the mineral soils, as clay-
ey gyttja and organic clay. In the geotechnical practice, there is however not a gener-
ally accepted rule how to classify the organic soils into main groups. This book only
covers questions relevant to organic soil. This means that much of the achievements
reached during the last years about soft clay are not dealt with here as long as they
are not relevant for design calculations associated with construction on organic soil.
Embankments on organic soils are most often constructed for roads or for flood
control dikes. There are dams for water retention as well as waste tailings dams
founded on organic soils. In recent years temporary embankments have been utilized
to preload the sot~ subsoil, including organic subsoil and in this way improving the
bearing capacity before the structure is built. Such procedures are used not only for
easily adjustable structures like e.g. coal yards but also for buildings.
When an embankment is erected directly on soft organic soil layers, both stability
and settlement problems will generally arise. The load increase and geotechnical
properties of soft soil together with schedule of construction (available construc-
tion time) and acceptable future settlements are the important factors that govern the
choice of construction method.
Improvement of existing structures founded on organic soil create special prob-
lems. Formerly, the settlements of e.g. a road sometimes were of little importance
and thus many roads were built as "floating" structures (on timber fascines) with a
relatively low factor of safety.
Organic soil occurs in many forms and with varying thickness. Due to this, the
problems differ from site to site and the construction methods must be adopted to the
conditions in each specific case. One also has to consider the experience of an indi-
vidual country and the machinery available by the contractors.
 The progress in understanding the behaviour of organic soils under load as well
as in utilization of new techniques and materials makes it possible to undertake
successfully projects which could not be performed a couple of years ago.
This textbook presents the experience gained by the authors from practical con-
suiting work and from research projects. A research co-operation has been going on
between the Swedish Geotechnical Institute and the Warsaw Agricultural Universi-
ty. This close cooperation has resulted in several reports and papers. The authors are
all involved in the total text although the great work of making the manuscript to
each chapter was divided.
The textbook consists of two parts. The first part is dedicated to the testing,
calculation and general behaviour of organic soils under load and the second part to
design and construction methods. The first part of the textbook thus presents
9 Classification
9 Field tests
9 Laboratory testing
9 Stability analysis
9 Deformation analysis
Based on these properties (basic information) different foundation methods are
presented in the second part of the textbook. The methods are applicable to construc-
tion of
9 Road embankments
9 Dikes e.g. for flood control
9 Dams for water retention
9 Preloading of foundations for structures
9 Waste tailing dams on organic soils
9 Widening of existing embankments
9 Transition zones between settling embankments and stiff structures
9 Land reclamation with soft sea beds.
The second part of this textbook is written in such a way that it shall be possible
for a designer/contractor to pass over the basic chapters in part one. To improve the
usefulness of the textbook, detailed examples are shown how to make evaluation and
calculation.