Geotechnical properties of soft clays along Yangon River – Characteristics of soft clays in Thilawa Port area

Abstract

The Thilawa Port Development Project is the first large-scale development project to be carried out in the area of sedimented soft clays along the Yangon River in Myanmar. As there is little information about the soft clays sedimented along this river, the mechanical properties of the soft clays in the Thilawa Port area were summarized and compared with the properties of clays in other countries from the perspective of the geotechnical design. It was shown that the high-quality data obtained by the samples taken by a fixed piston sampler were essential to properly determining the design parameters of the soft clays in the Thilawa Project. The relationship between the strength and consolidation history of Thilawa clay was clarified from the results of unconfined compression tests and consolidation tests conducted on the high-quality samples. Furthermore, it was shown that the clay at shallow depths became overconsolidated due to desiccation stress and that its compressibility decreased. The relative characteristics of Thilawa clay were clarified by comparing the geotechnical parameters related to the strength and consolidation-compression properties of the Thilawa clay with those of representative clays of Eastern and Southeastern Asia.

Keywords

• Soft clay
• Undisturbed sample
• Physical properties of clay
• Unconfined compression test
• Over-consolidated clay
• Compression index