Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ivo Herle
Institute of Geotechnical Engineering
TU Dresden
Originality
great load concentrations
(Cheops: 5 000 000 t / 231 x 231 m)
almost 1000 kPa
Wadi Garawi
(30 km south of Cairo)
just after the first
pyramid of Saqqarah
imperviousness vs stability
Kafara Dam
(Schnitter, 1994)
Section of a modern earth dam
divers needed
Temple at Eridu (Mesopotamia)
1 Fill
2 Soft soil
3 Temenos (platform for the temple)
(Interpretation by J. Kerisel)
Reinforcement
Present adaptation:
Fill
Ancient Greece
Present adaptation:
Stylobates at Delos
iron clamps:
uniform load spreading
prevention of dislocation
(earthquakes)
Earthquake protection
(Delos)
Foundations Pergamum
1st century BC
Let the foundations of those works be dug from a solid site and to a solid base if it
can be found, as much as shall seem proportionate to the size of the work; and let
the whole site be worked into a structure as solid as possible. And let walls be built
upon the ground under the columns, one-half thicker than the columns are to be,
so that the lower portions are stronger than the higher. . . . The spaces between
the columns are to be arched over, or made solid by being rammed down, so that
the columns may be held apart.
But if a solid foundation is not found, and the site is loose earth right down, or
marshy, then it is to be excavated and cleared and remade with piles of alder or
of olive or charred oak, and the piles are to be driven close together by machinery,
and the intervals between are to be filled with charcoal. Then the foundations are
to be filled with very solid structures.
Foundation after Vitruvius
Roman shallow foundations
foundations built of
fired earth slabs
with wooden reinforcement
upper scene: pumping dry with wheels and drums (screw principle)
lower scene: underwater construction using stone and quicklime to drive out water
Retaining walls after Vitruvius
Bridge of Beaugency
(earlier than 14th century)
foundations of a pier on sand
masonry on short wooden piles
susceptible to scour
Pile driving
(depths in m)
Rialto Bridge, Venice
Rialto bridge (Venice, 1588-92)
Mining techniques
after Agricola (1556)
shaft dimension 31 m
four-wheeled trolleys for transport
hydraulic pumps for dewatering
ventilation shafts
Tunnel shield (patented 1818)
No mass of sand can be put together without some history, and that
history will determine the nature of its limiting equilibrium.
Dilatancy experiment (Reynolds, 1886)
relationship between
void ratio e
and pressure p:
e
a=
p
Theory of consolidation, PES (1923)
Concluding remarks