Failure of a warehouse floor by subsoil settlement

Abstract

This paper discusses the failure of a warehouse floor (with an approximate surface area of 1.550 m2) inside an industrial building with a total developed area of approx. 8.200 m2 along with the testing of the failure and its repair. Over ten-odd years of operation of the industrial building, its floor was found to develop non-uniform settlement with a maximum depth of approximately 150 mm from the original floor level. The completed survey inspections, geotechnical tests and FEM studies demonstrated that the root cause of these non-uniform settlement events was the foundation of the warehouse floor, built on a subsoil which featured high and long-term deformability. Given the investigated conditions, it was decided to modify the foundation of the new warehouse floor slab by reinforcing the subsoil with drilled micropiling. The calculations completed, test loading of a drilled micropile and on-site inspection of the warehouse flooring in use confirmed that the modification was rational.