Abstract:
Stress transformation from yielding part of soil on
to adjacent rigid part is known as the arching action of soil.
Terzaghi’s trapdoor test was an important milestone in
development of theories on soil arching, soil arching has both
active and passive effects. Stresses acting on underground
structures need to be estimated correctly for economical design
and evaluation of the performance of those structures
accounting the effect of soil arching. An experimental approach
in measuring real-time stress variation on buried structures due
to arching effect of soil is discussed in this paper. Experimental
study was done to study the effect of both active and passive soil
arching in dry and saturated sandy soil using effective and total
earth pressure cells and the stress variation on underground
structures was analyzed. The test results were compared with
Terzaghi’s arching theory. Results conclude that in passive soil
arching stress transform to structures increase with stress
increment where, as the stress transform to structures reduce
with settlement of the structure. In addition, settling of
surrounding soil causes increase in the stress transform to
structures.
