ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of pore pressures during construction of earth dam and in the last section the results of analysis are compared with field measurements. Saturated soils can be modelled as coupled fluid saturated porous deformable media. The beginning of treatment of saturated soils as coupled two-phase media can probably be traced to Terzaghi’s consolidation theory. Nonlinear material behaviour as well as the nonlinear compressibility of pore air-water mixture are taken into account. The effective stress equation is also valid for partially saturated soils, provided the pore air is in occluded state, in the form of air bubbles. The physics of pore air-water mixture is complex. The same procedure can be used in simulation of excavation and construction when the saturated or partially saturated soils are modelled as two-phase media. In finite element simulations the whole construction process is simulated in a few discrete stages, each corresponding to a finite increment.
