FUNDAMENTAL STUDY ON PREDICTION OF LONG-TERM SETTLEMENT OF HOUSES BASED ON THREE DIMENTIONAL FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

An analytical study on the long-term settlement behavior of houses built on the weak clayey ground is reported. To simulate the observed phenomena of the long-term settlement of a few houses quantitatively, the three-dimensional finite element analysis has been carried out. In the analysis, the long-term deformation of saturated clay with the strength increase as consolidation process is considered. Cam-clay model is adopted to simulate the stress-strain characteristics of clay. According to the results obtained by the analysis, it is shown that the observed phenomena can be simulated by the analysis precisely. On the other hand, the reliability of the soil parameters used in the analysis influences the reliability of the predicted settlement strongly. In the latter part of this paper, the settlement of a house on the heterogeneous ground is discussed based on the Monte Carlo simulation. To realize the reliability based design of houses, a fundamental study such as introduced in this paper is indispensable.