MATERIAL BEHAVIOUR AND CONSTITUTIVE MODELLING OF ORGANIC SOILS

This paper presents a historical overview of the developments in the understanding of the material behaviour of organic soil. The main areas of uncertainty and implications on the resulting design of embankment construction and reclamations are presented. Due to the complex and heterogeneous nature of organic soils, the uncertainty of the correlations between in-situ, laboratory measurements and field observations is larger when compared to clay and sand. The reliability of geotechnical designs on organic soils could be improved when advanced coupled constitutive models, including fibre reinforcing effects, are used to back-analyse data, resulting from advanced in-situ and laboratory tests, thus reducing the risks involved.