Simulation of the time-dependent behaviour of a test embankment on soft soil

The now-abandoned project for a new international airport for Mexico City was located at a site on the former Texcoco Lake, where extremely difficult subsoil conditions prevail. The behaviour of one of the trial embankments built to test foundation solutions for the runways is analysed in this paper. Observational data were gathered over 50 months at the so-called reference embankment, where no special foundation or soil improvement techniques were adopted. The performance of this embankment was investigated through finite-element simulations in which an elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model was implemented in commercial software. The model incorporates key features such as time dependence, long-term deformation and an anisotropic flow surface. The results provide an assessment of the constitutive description adopted as well as the role of anisotropy in the simulation of the case study.