MODELING SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF SOIL PARAMETERS

The purpose of this study is to show that geostatistics can help in finding the structure of the spatial variability of the undrained shear strength within a clay deposit. The site under study, B-6, owes its name to the earth dam that will be constructed on it; the site is located on the shore of the Broadback River in the James Bay area of Quebec. The geostatistical analysis is carried out on the unaltered zone of the B-6 clay; it shows an anisotropic structure for the spatial variability. The knowledge of the structure (variogram) of the undrained shear strength is used in the kriging theory to compute estimations at points of the deposit where experimental measurements are not available. Kriging is also used to identify weak zones within the B-6 clay. -from Authors