ABSTRACT
Japan has a 400 years’ history of shallow sea reclamation for new land. However, the application of Soil Mechanics Engineering to reclamation started just recently. In reclamation works, two types of fill–material, the pit sand and the dredged seabed soil, are generally employed. The water content of dredged soil used as fill–material is rather high due to the intrusion of seawater while dredging and as a result, an extremely soft ground is made–up. As such there arise the problems of insufficient bearing capacity and subsidence of the reclaimed ground. Some measures for ground improvement are required to solve these problems. This paper deals with the technology on reclamation, seabed dredging, revetment construction, the problems of reclaimed ground as viewed from Soil Mechanics Engineering and their solutions. These are discussed together with Japan’s unique nature of technological development in the field of reclamation engineering.
