Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct

Deep trench, landslide and effects on the foundations of a residential building: A case study
A. Brencich
DICAT - Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering., University of Genoa, via Montallegro 1 16145 Genova, Italy

article

info

abstract
The case study discussed in this paper deals with the excavation of an excessively deep and long trench in a clay slope made at one edge of an urban connecting road. The subsequent failure of the top portion of the slope did not cause any human casualty, but did severe damage to a neighbouring retaining wall and to an adjacent building. The works aimed at the stabilization of the slope are suspected to have increased the damage to the foundation system of the building. The aim of this paper is to show that all these events could be foreseen just by relying on the basic concepts of mechanics and on proper engineering practice. The causes for the landslide, and subsequent problems, are to be found in an excessive confidence in soil cohesion and in the application of standard engineering procedures in a non-standard case. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Available online 12 March 2010 Keywords: Excavation Cohesion Landslide Foundations

1. Introduction Systematic studies on the stability of soil slopes [1, among others] and the research carried out in the last 30 years [215] has gathered relevant information on slope and excavation stability such that this issue is now substantially understood from the theoretical point of view. Several manuals [16,17, among others] provide clear suggestions on the limits with unsupported slopes for safety excavations to be performed. Nevertheless, in the recent years several failures of trenches and slopes have been recorded [18], showing that scientific research has not yet been completely transferred into common engineering practice. From this point of view, a large part of the job is for the academics and their teaching efforts. In this paper a case study is discussed showing how the failure of the top side of a deep trench may involve a large part of the neighbouring area including, in the specific case, a residential building, due to complex interaction between the soil and the structure causing alarming cracks in the building. The strengthening works are also described. Excessive confidence in soil cohesion and in common engineering procedures are shown to be the causes of the landslide, i.e. the application of standard solutions to non-standard cases. It is shown that the landslide could be foreseen just by recalling the basic concepts of mechanics and proper engineering practice, and that further scientific research, in this case as in many other cases, is not needed to explain the events.

2. The landslide and the neighbouring area In 1984 the Municipality decided to build a connecting road, Fig. 1, to relieve one of the most difficult traffic nodes in the area (a) to a major road (b), Fig. 1. The total length of the road was 250 m, the first 120 m requiring some embankment of reduced height, the second 130 m requiring deep trench excavations, which are illustrated in Figs. 2 and 3. The first part of the road (upper part, left-hand side, approximately up to drilling D1 of Fig. 1) was built in 1984, while the second part was completed in 1990. The second part of the road, Fig. 2, required the excavation of a 7-to-9 m deep trench. The walls of the trench were massive structures built in front of a double series of 220 mm piles at a 280 mm net distance one from the other, Figs. 3 and 4; the piles were also intended as provisional support of the soil. According to the original design, the excavations and the related retaining walls were expected to be extended by steps no longer than 5 m in order to prevent landslides of the slope. In reality, however, the excavations were left without any provisional support, so that on the 5th of October 1990, after 2-day long heavy rain, the top portion of the trench collapsed, involving a large part of the area close to the trench, Figs. 2 and 47, including a residential building dating back to 19621964 and a retaining wall holding the embankment in front of the building. In the first days after the landslide, the pavement of the embankment behind the old retaining wall showed severe cracks that were undoubtedly caused by the movement of the old retaining wall and the subsequent settlement of the embankment, Fig. 7; the cracks were sealed with bitumen. The increasing opening of the cracks requiring re-sealing every two-three days, and the leaning outwards of the vertical rods of the railings (Fig. 7) showed

Tel.: +39 0103532512; fax: +39 0103532534. E-mail address: brencich@dicat.unige.it.

0141-0296/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2010.02.019

1822

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

Fig. 1. Aerial view of the area and of the connecting urban road between area (a) and road (b). Dashed polygon: Area of interest for the case study, Fig. 2. D1-to-D4 locate the drillings for pre-design geological investigations. Bold dotted line indicates the extent of the landslide, see also Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Final part of the connecting road at which the layout required a 7-to-9 m deep trench. Shaded area: Extension of the landslide. Sections AA and BB in Fig. 4.

that the settlement process was still in progress several weeks after the landslide. Rough measurements showed that the old retaining wall underwent an approximately 910 cm horizontal displacement and a 45 cm vertical displacement. Some months after the landslide, cracks were discovered on the longitudinal beam of the first floor of the building, which consisted in a open space (garage) at ground level, Fig. 8. A detailed survey on the r.c. frame of the building showed that the other beams of the lower level (ground floor) were also damaged in a similar way and that lesser damage could also be found in the beams at higher levels. 3. Deficiencies in the residential building and in the geological investigations for the design of the road The four storey residential building was built in 196264. Its original structural design could not be found, but a detailed survey showed the structure of the building to be an r.c. frame with

high beams (with low percentage of steel bars), deep columns and independent foundations. The depth of the foundations, Fig. 4, have been deduced from subsequent investigations by means of direct drilling through them. The downstream columns had very deep foundations to reach the first rock layer, while the upstream columns could be directly laid on the rock layer, and the intermediate ones were laid on a concrete well which relied on the rock layer. Due to the excessive length of the downstream columns, having foundations more than 10 m distant from the first floor, an intermediate layer of r.c. beams was introduced in the frame in order to prevent buckling. These beams were just below the pavement of the ground floor of the building and were discovered only during the retrofitting works. When building a house on a slope, the retaining walls are the first structures to be built in order to create the embankment around the building from the waste of the construction. According to the over-simplified design and building procedures of fifty

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

1823

Fig. 3. Detail of the landslide area and of the road layout. Sections AA and BB in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. (a) Section AA; (b) section BB of Fig. 3.

1824

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829 Table 1 Main geotechnical data assumed for the design of the retaining walls. Soil depth (m) Internal friction angle 2728 35 Cohesion (N/mm2 ) 0.0200.025 0 Density (kN/m3 ) 1.9 2.02.1

>7

07

Fig. 5. View of the landslide from below, 10 days after the occurrence. A large part of the soil had already been removed to make space for the wagon drill (in the far distance).

The investigations were done with rotary-percussion drills unable to give reliable results. The different types of soil and rock had to be identified on the basis of a couple of rough parameters: (i) the speed of the drilling hammer related to the actual power of the wagon drill; (ii) the colour of the material coming out from the drillings. Thus, identification of the soils and rocks was substantially provided by the experience and skill of the people driving the wagon drill, and by some other drillings performed some years before in a neighbouring area, as stated by the geologist in charge for the geological study. In addition, the four drillings were all performed on the sides of the designed road, i.e. almost along a line, which made it impossible to reconstruct a detailed geological section of the area. The design of the retaining structures required a large number of piles, a double vertical row and an inclined row, with very high safety factors. The designer asked for the piles to be done first, also as a provisional device to protect the workers from further landslides, then to dig the trench. But the contractor changed the procedure (see Table 1). After the landslide, several drillings were done in the area, allowing the geological reconstruction of Fig. 4. It was discovered that the first rock layer (rock type 1) consisted of severely fractured limestone layers (10-to-50 cm thick) alternated with clay layers (5-to-10 cm thick). The inclination of the bedrock proved to be important. 4. Investigation on the causes of the landslide and its effects The investigations after the landslide showed that the contractor dug a deep trench along the road layout, but they could not identify the exact depth of the trench, which was estimated to be 5 m deep on average at a distance of 5-to-10 m from the old retaining wall, Fig. 2. The top portion of the trench did not collapse immediately but after some five days, the last two of which were affected by heavy rainfalls. Fig. 6 shows that the landslide reached the foundations of the buttresses in section BB, but not in section AA; this is probably due to the reduced depth of the trench close to section AA and the higher depth close to section BB. The rock layer shown in Fig. 4 suggests that the sliding surface could be activated by the bedrock; but this is only a conjecture since the position of the rock layer n. 1 is not known exactly. Some data from the drillings suggests that there should be an increase in the slope just below and close to the trench. In order to understand the basic phenomena that led to the landslide we do not need very detailed analyses. In the following we assume that the trench depth was 5 m. The first parameter that we can try to estimate is the apparent cohesion obtained, assuming that 5 m is critical depth of tension cracks into the soil [19,20]: Hcr = 3.8c

Fig. 6. Photo of the landslide taken from the large road (b) of Fig. 1 some days after the landslide. A part of the collapsed soil has been already removed to allow the wagon drill to reach the proper position. In the background: The undermined foundation of the buttress.

years ago, these walls were built without any design, leaving the structure to the experience of the bricklayers. In this case, no exact information on the original shape of the wall could be derived. The only information was that, as usual, the retaining wall had been built before the building and that, during the construction of the residential building, i.e. approximately in 1962, a period of strong rainfall caused a mudflow to fill a large part of the space behind the newly built wall; by that time, the embankment was not yet to its final height. As a consequence of the mudflow, the buttresses of Figs. 4 and 6 were built allowing some kind of equilibrium to be reached until the events of this case study. It is clear that the safety margins of the retaining wall were far from the modern standards. According to the local building code, in the middle of the 80s a geological survey of the area had been performed before the design phase of the connection road. Points D1-to-D4 of Fig. 1 show the positions of the drillings, 18 to 25 m deep, used to investigate the layers of soil and rock.

= 5 m,

(1)

from which, assuming = 19 kN/m3 , we obtain: c = 25 kN/m2 = 25 kPa, which is quite a standard value for the area. Since no precise information on the exact dimension of the trench is available, we assume the simplified scheme of Fig. 9, where the slip surface is assumed circular even though it is cycloidal [21]. We assume an internal friction angle of 27 and a cohesion of 25 kPa for the soil. With these assumptions the safety factor [22] of the

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

1825

Fig. 7. Pavement of the embankment behind the old retaining wall one year after the landslide. Cracks are a clear sign of movement of the old retaining wall and relaxation of the embankment itself.

top part of the slope of Fig. 9 would be 0.77. During the first days after the landslide, cracks parallel to the excavation slope were observed; they were probably tension cracks close to the sliding surface, Fig. 9, which are quite typical of this kind of landslide. The heavy rainfall filled the cracks with water, expediting the activation of the landslide. The scheme of Fig. 9 is intended to represent an average condition of the top side of the trench dug by the contractor; calculations would lead to different results if the value for cohesion were different, if the slope above the trench were assumed horizontal instead of inclined, or if the trench side were inclined instead of vertical. Whatever the choice of the basic parameters, the safety factor of the scheme of Fig. 9 shows that failure of the top side of the trench was unavoidable. The circumstance of its failure five days after the trench had been dug and after two days of heavy rainfall suggests that the cause of failure was the reduction of effective cohesion due to saturation of the soil, which caused failure of one side of the trench because the safety factor was already too close to unity. Actually, it is well known [3,23,24, among others] that the short term (or effective stress analysis) and the long term (or total stress analysis) conditions are rather different. In the first case, the effective cohesion may attain significant values, thus allowing significant excavations; in the latter case, cohesion is strongly reduced, almost vanishing in some cases. The case study here discussed is related to the changes in short term conditions: they may substantially change the effective stress analysis, turning the situation from stable to unstable. The old retaining wall, never designed but just built, clearly consisted of poor concrete. Nevertheless, the wall behaved as a rigid block, apart some secondary cracks, showing a clear movement due to a translation downwards and a rotation. For this reason, the quality of its materials become a secondary issue. Such a collapse mechanism is coherent with the long term behaviour of the wall. After the new retaining wall had been built and the soil replaced in front of the buttress foundation, the wall went on moving for approximately two years with decreasing speed until, probably, the frontal passive pressure and the vertical actions on the foundations could be reactivated by soil compaction. This demonstrates that the quality of materials in retaining structures

may not be the cause of their collapse. Equilibrium is lost because of inadequate dimensions of the foundations, either of the wall and of its buttresses, that lead to proportionally inadequate safety factors. The landslide was therefore unavoidable. This can be clearly shown by also referring to [17], where the vertical part of a trench is required to be no more than 1.00m in the bottom part of the trench and the slope of the excavations to be no more than 53. In this case, the inclination of the trench sides was between 70to-90, showing that the excavations were completely outside any safety standard. This case shows that clay-type soils may show significant values of apparent cohesion which, actually, may be taken into account for the provisional phases of excavation. The limits provided in [16,17] are a reasonable balance between safety and economy. A vanishing cohesion would be an overconservative assumption in the intermediate phases of excavations, but is justified for long term safety calculations since it refers to the conditions of saturated soils, which is typical of intense rainfall periods. Since the origin of the landslide is rather clear, a large part of the investigations were related to the damages to the r.c. frame of the residential building; several causes have been suggested, most of which are not mechanically justified. A list of the main causes is briefly discussed here. One of the causes claimed for the damage to the longitudinal beam (and the similar ones on the external sides) of Fig. 8 involves both shrinkage and creep. The first should be responsible for the cracks that are almost normal to the beam axis. Since the ground floor has no interior wall, the creep of the upper floors of the building could have overloaded the beams of the first floor, causing subsequent cracking. These assumptions do not take into account the age of the building: 26 years by the time the landslide occurred. Even though both shrinkage and creep are known phenomena not completely understood and still under research, it is well known, and also stated by several codes, that shrinkage lasts some 3 months, while creep lasts not more than 4 years, if no significant change occurred to the distribution of the loads in the structure [25]. The aforementioned hypothesis assumes that the cracks on the longitudinal beam were present since, say, 1968 and that nobody noticed them for the following 22 years, neither

1826

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

Fig. 8. (a) Overall view of the lower part of the r.c. frame of the residential building and possible displacements (sliding on the bedrock) of the foundations. (b) Crack pattern in the longitudinal beam of the first floor shown in (a).

the people living in the building nor the technicians that studied the buildings safety immediately after the landslide. In addition, this explanation would somehow justify the cracks in the central longitudinal beam of Fig. 8 but not in the similar longitudinal beams of the ground level along the perimeter of the building, which were not free but embedded into the veneer walls of the building. For all these reasons, this cause can been considered unrealistic. Another cause claimed for the damage to the longitudinal beam was the dynamic effect of the down-hole drilling hammer used for the piles on the r.c. frame, essentially resonance. The standard frequency of drilling hammers is nowadays in-between 1800 and 2400 Hz, with a lower limit that can reach 800 Hz for some types of hammer and was not lower than 30 Hz in the 80s. Even though no specific information is available for the r.c. building of this case study, we can assume that the first natural frequency of the building is in the range [1.53] Hz, which is quite a typical range for this kind of structure. The difference between the frequencies of the down-hole hammer and of the building, whatever the error in the estimation of the latter, shows that no resonance is possible. If the damage to the r.c. beams of the ground floor was due to resonance phenomena, also other parts of the building, such as the internal and outside walls of the building, should have been damaged; this was not found. Therefore, the dynamic effects of

20

Fig. 9. Schematic of the top part of the trench.

drilling the piles seem to be something affecting the psychology of people, but not the mechanics of vibrations. The most likely cause for the damage to the r.c. beams is the sliding of the foundations, which raises a fundamental question. It has been seen that the old retaining wall and the embankment underwent significant displacements as a consequence of the land-

5.00

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

1827

Fig. 10. Retrofitting works: r.c. U-shaped solid slab around the building and active 6 tendons/side.

Fig. 11. Retrofitting works: r.c. U-shaped solid slab around the building and active 6 tendons/side. Original drawing. Geological section not fully reliable.

slide: did the embankment also drag the columns and foundations of the building or did the embankment move through the columns without any effect on the load bearing structure? This cause is actually realistic and mechanically sound. At this stage, before the retrofitting works provided further information, no answer could be given because: (i) no severe damage on the r.c. frame could be identified; (ii) no information was available on the foundations, nor on the quality of the soil they laid on. 5. Strengthening of the residential building and new outcomes In 2000, 10 years after the landslide, retrofitting works were performed on the building and its old retaining wall. A large Ushaped r.c. solid slab 60 cm thick was constructed around the building, lying on the embankment and on the top of the old retaining wall, Figs. 10 and 11. The old retaining wall and the related em-

bankment were shortened by 1 m in order to reduce the pressure against the old wall. A new r.c. slab was connected to the solid bedrock by 6 tendons/side each one with a 600 kN traction. The inclination on the tendons was designed so as to compensate the horizontal thrust of the building, assuming the inclination of the bedrock as deduced from a detailed geological survey exactly below the building. Such an approach assumed that the damage to the building was due to slippage of the foundations, which was considered to be very likely since the detailed geological tests proved that the first rock layer consisted of alternate layers of 10-to-50 cm of fractured limestone and 5-to-10 cm of wet clay. The slab was 60 cm thick, reinforced with 3 layers of steel web 12 mm 20 cm 20 cm, except for the parts close to the tendons where the thickness was increased to 1.5 m, the layers of reinforcing steel proportionally increased; specific reinforcement was designed close to the tendons heads.

1828

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829

The outcomes of the retrofitting phase were crucial to demonstrate that the designed works were proportionate to the specific case. Nevertheless, they did not answer the fundamental question: did the movement of the embankment make the foundations move, or was it some effect related to the piles needed for the new retaining wall built to make space for the road? Figs. 12 and 13 allowed the technicians to discover a significant detail on the r.c. structure of the building: inadequate reinforcement and inadequate connection between structural elements, though this was a common building method in the 60s. The outcomes revealed during the retrofitting works demonstrated that the foundations of the building underwent vertical and horizontal displacements, which could be responsible for the observed cracks. Actually, most of the cracks are shear ones and some of them could be attributed to torsion transferred to the beams by the stiff columns.
Fig. 12. South-east corner of the building during the excavations to lower the embankmentposition A of Fig. 8(a). R.c. beams at ground level to reduce the free height of the columns (in that part the distance between the foundations and the first slab was 10 m). On the right hand part: Complete fracture between the r.c. beam and the column.

6. Conclusions This case study provides some information on the concept of cohesion and on the possible interactions between landslides and existing buildings. 1. Cohesion depends on the water content in the soil and its meaning is often misunderstood: the assumption of vanishing cohesion in long term calculations takes into account the condition of complete saturation. During excavations, the apparent cohesion may attain significant values, thus allowing quite deep excavations that remain stable until a modification of the water content. 2. The high safety margins included in the modern building codes are justified by noting that structures built in 50 s and 60 s are sometimes severely weak: (i) retaining walls may not be designed; (ii) the foundations may be laid on apparently stable rock layers; and (iii) detailing of the r.c. structure may be rather poor. Acknowledgements The author is grateful to Prof. Piero Villaggio for his suggestions and to his father, Alfredo Brencich, for allowing the author to work on this case. References
[1] Bishop AW, Morgenstern NR. Stability coefficients for earth slopes. Geotechnique 1960;10(4):12950. [2] Baker R. Determination of the critical slip surface in slope stability computations. Int J Numer Anal Methods Geomech 1980;4(4):33359. [3] Griffiths DV, Li CO. Analysis of delayed failure in sloping excavations. J Geotech Engrg ASCE 1993;119(9):136078. [4] Christian JT, Ladd CC, Baecher GB. Reliability applied to slope stability analysis. J Geotech Engrg ASCE 1994;120(12):2180207. [5] Dawson EM, Roth WH, Drescher A. Slope stability analysis by strength reduction. Geotechnique 1999;49(6):83540. [6] Calderon PA, Adam JM, Paya-Zaforteza I. Failure analysis and remedial measures applied to a RC water tank. Eng Failure Anal 2009;16(5):167485. [7] Griffiths DV, Lane PA. Slope stability analysis by finite elements. Geotechnique 1999;49(3):387403. [8] Lam L, Fredlung DG. A general limit equilibrium a model for three-dimensional slope stability analysis. Can Geotch J 1993;30:90519. [9] Baker R. Determination of the critical slip surface in slope stability computations. Int J Numer Anal Methods Geomech 2005;4(4):33359. [10] Chen Z, Wang X, Haberfield C, Yin J-H, Wang Y. A three-dimensional slope stability analysis method using the upper bound theorem: Part I: Theory and methods. Int J Rock Mech Min Sci 2001;38(3):36978. [11] Chen Z, Wang J, Wang Y, Yin J-H, Haberfield C. Three-dimensional slope stability analysis method using the upper bound theorem: Part II: Numerical approaches, applications and extensions. Int J Rock Mech Min Sci 2001;38(3): 37997. [12] Donald IB, Chen Z. Slope stability analysis by the upper bound approach: Fundamentals and methods. Can Geotech J 1997;34(6):85362. [13] Gasmo JM, Rahardjo H, Leong EC. Infiltration effects on stability of a residual soil slope. Comput Geotech 2000;26(2):14565.

Fig. 13. South-east corner of the building, detail. The few bars connecting the column to the beam were broken. The smooth surface between the column and the beam indicates that they had not been cast at the same time; the columns were first and the beams afterwards.

The retrofitting of the old retaining wall was obtained by means of three devices: (i) reducing the pressure against the wall by removing 1 m of the embankment; (ii) by the slab providing additional vertical load to the wall; (iii) detailing the slab geometry close to the free end, Fig. 11, in order to restrain the top of the old wall. During the excavations to lower the level of the embankment at the south-east corner of the building, position A of Fig. 8(a), the beams used to reduce the free height of the columns were found. One of these beams was detached by 4 cm from the column, Figs. 12 and 13, giving evidence to the hypothesis that the damage to the buildings was caused by sliding of the foundations on the rock layer, as already discussed. Actually, this large fracture showed that the displacement of the foundations should be expected to be as large as 8-to-10 cm in the horizontal direction and some 2/3 of that value in the vertical direction. Fig. 13 also shows a detail of the r.c. structure: the beams and the columns were not cast at the same time, that the columns were first and the beams afterwards could be deduced from the smooth column/beam surface. The bars connecting the beam to the column were 12 mm bars at each corner of the beam (4 bars) and were severely corroded. After the retrofitting works, neither new cracks appeared on the building nor were any gunshots ever heard by the people living in the building. The total cost of the retrofitting works was equivalent to e 180.000 nowadays.

A. Brencich / Engineering Structures 32 (2010) 18211829 [14] Griffiths DV, Fenton GA. Probabilistic slope stability analysis by finite elements. J Geotech Geoenviron Eng 2004;130:50718. [15] Castro-Fresno D, del Coz Diaz JJ, Lopez LA, Garcia Nieto PJ. Evaluation of the resistant capacity of cable nets using the finite element method and experimental validation. Eng Geology 2008;100(12):110. [16] US Army Corps of Eng.rs. Slope Stability. Publication EM 1110-2-1902. Washington, DC; 2003. [17] Texas Department of Insurance. Excavation Safety, publication. HS98121C (706); 2006. [18] Au-Yeung YS, Kwong JSM (Eds.), A study on past failures of trench excavations. Special Project Report SPR 2/2001. Hong Kong, Mainland East Division; 2001.

1829

[19] Terzaghi K. Theoretical soil mechanics. New York (NJ): John Wiley; 1943. [20] Budhu M. Soil mechanics and foundations. Chicester: John Wiley & Sons Inc.; 1999. [21] Lancellotta R. Geotechnical engineering. Rotterdam: Balkema; 1995. [22] Scheidegger AE. Theoretical geomorphology. Berlin: Springer; 1991. [23] Alonso EE, Gens A, Josa A. A constitutive model for partially saturated soils. Gotechnique 1990;40(3):40530. [24] Fredlund DG, Morgenstern NR, Widger RA. The shear strength of unsaturated soils. Can Geotech J 1977;15:31321. [25] Beton-Kalender, Vols. 1 and 2. Berlin-Munchen: Ernst and Sohn; 1967.