Authors : Ibtehaj Taha Jawad, Zaid Hameed Majeed and Elaf Jasim Mahan
Abstract: Since, the collapsible soils covers considerable areas in Iraq, cavitations and sinkholes are likely to be formed. These phenomenapose a threat to stability of foundation of structures and infrastructures. The riskiness becomes more serious when losing a considerable supporting soil under foundations. Therefore, this study tried to understand the behavior of Raft Foundation when a sinkhole formed at its center with different sizes. The distribution of displacement and soil reaction were the main studied variables. SAFE 2014 (CSI) Software was employed to analysis the models. Winkler Model was adopted to simulate the soil-structure interaction. The results show that the position of maximum displacement and soil reaction were turned from corners in the case of basic model (no sinkhole) to the center of foundation. Moreover, the results display that the size of sinkhole to the size of foundation at which the failure occurred was 0.45 and above.
Ibtehaj Taha Jawad, Zaid Hameed Majeed and Elaf Jasim Mahan, 2018. Riskiness of Size of Sinkhole Beneath the Center of Raft Foundation. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 13: 9606-9612.