Identifying and Analyzing Problematic Soils

Problematic soils are those that make the construction of foundations extremely difficult. They include expansive soils, collapsing soils, and sanitary landfill. Their distribution can vary widely, both areally and with depth. However, the ability to identify these soils would be invaluable to developers and geotechnical engineers. This paper aims at discussing criteria for identifying these soils and analyze only the collapse related data to determine their nature and extent of the variability. Analysis of data at different depths showed high dispersion tendencies. Regression model showed linear variation and identified strongly related collapse parameters with validation by factor analysis.