SYNOPSIS

Failures do occasionally occur in natural and engineered features involving the ground to leave the usage of facilities at or adjoining the ground failures severely disrupted. It follows that the correct diagnosis or forensic geotechnics findings to the cause of a failure is imperative for appropriate retrofitting works to be formulated to restore utility to the affected facilities. An undetermined or incorrectly established cause for a failure would likely lead to the unsuitable choice of restorative measures and may pose great danger to their execution or, worse, lead to the failure being exacerbated.
A ground failure may also be looked upon as the conclusion of a prototype test and would offer the opportunity to possibly discover any previously unknown root cause for a similar class of failures. This has the role of potentially contributing towards advancing the understanding of the pertinent engineering processes involved for the benefit of the engineering industry and society at large. Another objective of rising importance for forensic geotechnics is the assignment of liabilities for a failure with little doubt to relevant parties. To this end, the importance of employing correct and consistent fundamental soil and engineering mechanics for credible forensic geotechnics work is emphasised.

Keywords: Ground failure, Diagnosis, Fundamental mechanics.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Ir. Yee Thien Seng is the Chairman of Geotechnical Engineering Technical Division. Ir. Yee is the principal of Geo.Consult, a practice offering expert and specialist consultancy to the construction industry; in particular on geotechnical engineering aspects. He has authored/co-authored more than a dozen technical papers in local and international conferences. Ir. Yee is an expert witness and accredited checker for design of geotechnical engineering works registered with the Board of Engineer Malaysia.