Considerations on Stability of Embankments on Clay

This paper is part of a Special Lecture presented at the International Symposium on Coastal Geotechnical Engineering, IS Yokohama 2000, held in Yokohama in September 2000. It examines the different approaches that have been proposed for the evaluation of stability of embankments on soft clays. Stability of embankments constructed in one stage is well controlled. However, experience shows that engineers have to be careful when they want to apply in a given geological context an empirical approach that has been developed in a different one. For stage-constructed embankments, there are indications that the methods proposed up to now have a tendency to underestimate stability.