STABILITY ANALYSIS OF AN EARTH DAM FOUNDATION IN TUNISIA

Abstract

Soil liquefaction has been the cause of most geotechnical hazards during earthquake events.
Its assessment is an important design consideration for structures made on sandy deposits and situated in
seismically active regions. The present paper focuses on the analysis of soil liquefaction potential beneath an
earth dam in Tunisia using in situ and laboratory tests results. In order to precise the need of a planned
construction, site characterization was carried out with in situ tests (CPT) performed at the dam site before
and after vibrocompaction technique. In situ - based simplified procedures have been applied using the data
collected before and after the soil densification and the results are so analyzed. Furthermore, the laboratory
study includes cyclic triaxial testing of samples retrieved at different densities, confining stresses and cyclic
stress ratios and the results were discussed. The obtained results showed a general agreement between the
two types of approaches.