Reseña

People have been living on soft soil areas for thousands of years, but we are facing unprecedented challenges associated with urbanisation, climate change as well as the stress and changes in the demand on transport infrastructure. Thus, we no longer can rely on traditional models based on experience from the past. The paper discusses how advanced soil models can be used for simulating various geotechnical problems on soft clays. The advanced models available today can capture most features encountered in natural soft soil deposits, such as anisotropy, destructuration and creep, and thus enable modelling the time-dependent system response with sufficient accuracy. Yet, for optimal use of these models at engineering problems, certain aspects in numerical modelling should be addressed. The most important considerations regarding to model selection are discussed, including calibration and initialisation, as well as some difficulties and limitations arising from the coupled numerical framework adopted. The validity of the advocated modelling approaches for geotechnical engineering problems is demonstrated using several examples from engineering practice, including embankments on soft soils, deep excavations and regional subsidence. Some outstanding challenges are discussed, such as the difficulties in representing the initial state as well as the installation effects of foundation elements. Finally, some opportunities for further model developments in the context of real-world applications are highlighted, such as integrating geotechnical analyses modern techniques from data science.