Abstract
Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, is located on a large plain, known as the “SABANA”, 2600 m above sea level, on the eastern branch of the Andes mountains. The soils are of lacustrine and alluvial origin, mostly soft clays, several hundred meters thick. These were deposited during the last one million years (0.2 mm/year), over sedimentary rocks (from the cretaceous and early tertiary eras).
The upper 3 to 5 m are over consolidated due to desiccation and wetting; the water table fluctuates between 2- and 5-m below ground level. The clays below the topsoil suffer large volume changes due to water content changes. These movements, mostly consolidation but also sometimes expansion, result in a lot of damages to the infrastructure, and to light structures (houses and warehouses). Pavements suffer the most, with a lot of depressions that must be repaired (filled and repaved), with a large cost to the city; rarely do many roads last for the design period of asphalt pavement which is 10 years.
The paper explains the problem, how it works and some of the solutions implemented. It includes geotechnical characterization of the soils in the upper 5 m of the soil profile.