How to build on difficult foundation soils in Iasi County area

Abstract

Romania is a medium-sized country (23.83 millions ha), located in the south-eastern part of Europe. Geographically, plains and tablelands occupy 49.3 percent of the country area, hills occupy 30.2 percent, and mountains 20.5 percent.
Being the second largest city of Romania by number of inhabitants (after Bucharest), through its numerous historical, cultural and economic sites, also called "the museum-city", but also as an educational and business centre, Iaşi is the city of “Gh. Asachi†Technical University, we come from.
During the past decade, damage due to swelling action of swell-shrinking clays from IaÅŸi area, Romania, has been observed more clearly in some parts of IaÅŸi where rapid expansion of the city led to the construction of various kinds of structures.
In this study, a research program has been conducted to investigate the effect of remoulding and desiccation on the swelling behaviour of swell-shrinking clay and its swelling anisotropy, to estimate depth of active zone, to develop a simple technique in determining the magnitude of swelling based on water content of the soaked specimen after 24 and 72 h, and to produce predictive models which could be used to estimate the swelling potential of swell-shrinking clays from its mineralogical and simply measured engineering characteristics. A laboratory testing program was carried out using both undisturbed, and remoulded and desiccated samples selected from different locations.