Building Performance Founded on an Improved Sand in Recife, Brazil

Studies performed on a fourteen-storey building founded on an improved sand are presented. These studies included soil profile characterization, the choice of foundation type, the ground improvement, the numerical method used in settlement predictions, and the field instrumentation to monitoring vertical deformations. The effects of the soil-structure interaction and construction sequence are evaluated in the settlement predictions. The settlements measured were closely related to superstructure loading. A limited agreement is obtained between measured and calculated settlements.