A case study on expansive clays on Comodoro Rivadavia city.

S. ORLANDI; D. MANZANAL; A. RUIZ; V. GRAF; M. AVILA

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; XV Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnica Engineering; 2015

ISSMGE-SAIG

The buildings in arid or desert areas with wet periods and potentiallyexpansive soils require a foundation design of lightweight houses to identifypossible additional charges due to the expansiveness of the soil, or should allowthe volumetric change due to moisture content changes without affecting thefoundations. Comodoro Rivadavia soils have a very high expansive potential aspresented in Ruiz, Vargas & Manzanal (2012) and produce major problems inhouses when appropriate measures are not taken. Constructive pathologies havelegal consequences for professionals such as civil engineers and architects.Thiswork presents the study of a two-floor family house that presented a constructivepathology due to expansive clays. The studies taken previous to the constructionand design to foundational and construction aspects that failed are described indetail. Failure mechanisms that occurred in different areas of the house wereanalyzed too. The results of the study of soils involved are summarized and aseries of recommendations to implement foundations in expansive soils ispresented too. Constructive aspects of remediation adopted for the case study arealso summarized