Embankment Staging 8-1

Embankment Staging
This tutorial illustrates the advanced embankment staging capabilities in
Settle3D. An embankment will be constructed in several stages and then
extended in width, before being gradually removed.

The finished model can be found in the Tutorial 08 Embankment

Staging.s3z file in the Examples > Tutorials folder in your Settle3D
installation folder.

Topics covered

• Embankment designer

• Advanced embankment staging

• Increasing embankment width

• Adding new embankment layers

• Removing embankment layers

• Choosing soil properties from published data

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 Embankment Staging 8-2

Defining the Model

Start the Settle3D program.

Project Settings
Open the Project Settings dialog from the Analysis menu. Set the
Stress units = Metric, stress as kPa and the Settlement units =
Centimeters as shown.

Click on the Stages tab. Change the Number of Stages to 11.

Click OK to close the dialog.

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 Embankment Staging 8-3

Soil Properties
For this tutorial we will assume a 2 m layer of sand on top of 10 m of clay.
Select Soil Properties from the Properties menu. Change the name of
Material 1 to Sand.

To choose a Unit Weight, click on the ‘choose material property’ icon to

the left of the box where the unit weight is entered. You will see a dialog
that specifies some Unit Weights from literature. Under Filter List,
choose ‘Sand’ to show only the unit weights for sand. Select ‘Poorly-
graded sands’ as shown.

You can see at the top of the dialog that the unit weight is set to the
midpoint of the given range for poorly-graded sands (13.73 kN/m3). This
is fine so click the OK button.

Back in the Soil Properties dialog, you will see that the unit weight for
sand is set to the value of 13.73 that you just chose.

For Primary Consolidation, set the Material Type to Linear. If you click
the icon to choose values for mv and filter the materials to show only
sand, then you will see that there are no suggested values for sand.

Click Cancel and use the default value in the Soil Properties dialog. The
dialog should now look like this:

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 Embankment Staging 8-4

Click on the tab for Soil Property 2. Change the name to Clay. For Unit
Weight, click the icon to show typical values and filter to show only the
Clay values. Choose ‘Clays – typical, normally consolidated’ as shown.

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 Embankment Staging 8-5

Click OK.

For Primary Consolidation, click the icon to choose a value for Cc. Filter
the values for Clay and choose ‘Normally consolidated, medium sensitive
clays’.

Click OK. There are no data available for Cr so leave the default value of
0.1.

Choose a value for the void ratio by clicking on the icon next to e0. Filter
the list to show only clays, select Sandy Clay and click OK.

You Soil Properties dialog should now look like this:

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 Embankment Staging 8-6

Click OK to close the Soil Properties dialog.

Soil Layers
Select Soil Layers from the Properties menu. Change the thickness of
the first soil layer to 2. Click the button for Insert Layer Below. Set the
thickness of this layer to 10 as shown.

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 Embankment Staging 8-7

Click OK to close the dialog.

Embankment Loading

Now that we have defined the soil strata, it is time to build the
embankment. We will simulate the construction history of the
embankment by first building it upwards, then extending it horizontally,
and then gradually removing it.

Initial embankment construction

Select Add Embankment from the Loads menu. You will see the
Embankment Designer dialog. Change the Number of Layers to 3. Set the
Near End Angle and Far End Angle to 70 degrees. We want to add the
three layers in three different stages, so change the Stage for Layer 2 to
Stage 2 and the Stage for Layer 3 to Stage 3. The dialog should look like
this:

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 Embankment Staging 8-8

Leave all other parameters as default values and click OK to close the
dialog.

You will now be prompted to enter the near point for the embankment
centre line. Enter 0 −50 and hit Enter. Now you are prompted to enter the
far point. Enter 0 50 and hit Enter. You should now see an embankment
100 m long as shown. You may need to zoom out in the Plan View. Click
the Zoom All button (or press the F2 function key) to see the entire
embankment.

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 Embankment Staging 8-9

To see the settlements caused by the embankment, we can add a query

line. From the Query menu, select Add Query Line. Leave the default
query line properties as shown:

Click OK and you will now have to enter the start and finish points for
the query line. Enter −20 0 and hit Enter. Now type 20 0 and hit Enter.
You will see the compute progress indicator. After a few seconds, you
should see the query line with settlement results contoured in the 3D
view. Rotate the 3D view (by holding down the left mouse button while
moving the mouse) and zoom in (by spinning the middle mouse wheel)
and you should see the settlement profile as shown for Stage 1.

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 Embankment Staging 8-10

Click on the tab for Stage 2 and you will see the second layer of the
embankment has been added and the settlement has increased. Stage 3
shows further construction and further settlement. The Plan View gives
the minimum and maximum settlement along the query line (if you don’t
see it, right click on the query line, choose Query Display Options and
check the box to display minimum and maximum values).

You may now want to save this model by going to File → Save As, before
continuing with the tutorial.

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 Embankment Staging 8-11

Widening the embankment

We can now simulate the widening of the embankment by using the
Advanced options in the Embankment Designer. Right click on the
embankment and choose Embankment Properties. You will now see the
Embankment Designer again.

Click on the Advanced button, and you will see the Advanced
Embankment Staging dialog. Select the Advanced Staging checkbox.
Click the Add button. You will now see that you have the ability to add to
the left and/or right of the embankment. You may want to move this
dialog so that you can see the Embankment Designer at the same time.

We built the original embankment in Stages 1, 2 and 3. We will now

widen it in Stages 4, 5 and 6. Change the Stage to Stage 4. Change the
Layer to 1. Under Add to left, enter 5 as shown.

This will now extend the bottom layer of the embankment 5 m to the left
in Stage 4.

Click the Add button two more times and fill in the dialog to extend the
other two layers in Stages 5 and 6. The dialog should look like this.

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 Embankment Staging 8-12

Click OK to close the Advanced Embankment Staging dialog. You will

now be back in the Embankment Designer. You can see how the three
layers have been extended to the left.

Click OK. Settle3D will take a few seconds to calculate the new
settlement information.

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 Embankment Staging 8-13

Now click through the stages and observe the construction of the
embankment and changes in calculated settlement through the stages.
Stage 5 is shown below.

Embankment top layer

Now that the embankment has been extended, we want to add another
layer. From the Loads menu, select Edit and choose Properties. Click
on the embankment and hit Enter. You will see the Embankment
Designer once again. Change the number of layers to 4. For the fourth
layer, change the Stage to Stage 7 (recall that we extended the base in
stages 4, 5 and 6). You can see that the top layer automatically extends
over the original embankment width plus the extension.

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 Embankment Staging 8-14

Click OK to close the dialog.

After a few seconds, click on the tab for Stage 7. You should see a
maximum settlement of 47.7 cm.

Embankment removal
We can now remove the embankment layer by layer and observe the
effect on settlement. Right click on the embankment and choose
Embankment Properties. The main Embankment Designer allows you to
remove the entire embankment at some stage. However, since we want to
dismantle the embankment layer by layer, we need to click the Advanced
button.

In the Advanced Embankment Staging dialog, click the Add button.

Recall that we added the top layer in Stage 7, so we will remove it in
Stage 8. Change the Stage to Stage 8. Leave the Layer as Layer 4. Check
the box for Remove. The dialog will now look like this:

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 Embankment Staging 8-15

Click the Add button 3 more times and remove layers 3, 2 and 1 in stages
9, 10 and 11 respectively.

Click OK to return to the Embankment Designer. Click OK to close the

Embankment Designer.

After a few seconds, click through stages 8-11 and observe the change in
embankment geometry and settlement as layers are removed. The plot
below shows the results in Stage 11, when the entire embankment has
been removed.

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 Embankment Staging 8-16

You can see that the calculated settlement for this stage is 32.1 cm. The
settlement is greater than zero, even though there is no load. This is
because the clay layer is hysteretic, i.e. it is stiffer during unloading, than
during loading (Cr < Cc), therefore there is some permanent settlement
even after the load is removed.

This concludes the tutorial. Save this model by going to File → Save.
You may now exit the Settle3D program.

Settle3D v.2.0 Tutorial Manual