Modelling spatial variability of soil parameters

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to show that geostatistics can help in finding the structure of the spatial variability of the undrained shear strength within a clay deposit. The site under study, B-6, owes its name to the earth dam that will be constructed on it; the site is located on the shore of the Broadback River in the James Bay area of Quebec. The geostatistical analysis is carried out on the unaltered zone of the B-6 clay; it shows an anisotropic structure for the spatial variability. The knowledge of the structure (variogram) of the undrained shear strength is used in the kriging theory to compute estimations at points of the deposit where experimental measurements are not available. Kriging is also used to identify weak zones within the B-6 clay. The geostatistical analysis of the B-6 clay gives the opportunity to test the capability of the method. Even if the errors of measurements were small, the variogram has permitted detection and correction of a bias that affected a certain number of vane profiles. Key words: clay, geostatistics, undrained shear strength, variogram, measurements errors, kriging.