Author: İbrahim ÇOBANOĞLU, Ahmet ÖZBEK, Murat GÜL

Publishing Date: 2007

E-ISSN: 2147-9364

Volume 22 Issue 3

ABSTRACT:

A great number of settlement areas from past to present have been constructed over the Pleistocene-Recent loose deposits due to their lithological, topographical properties and positions. Nonetheless, many engineering promblems are generally typical for these deposits. One of the example of these areas is located in and around the Mersin city center. Old and recent alluvial deposits formed by rivers, beach deposits, sand dunes, calcrete and various colored soil formations are found in this region. Within the scope of this study, physical and mechanical properties of the loose units situated in the Mezitli town of Mersin Province were investigated, and the situation of the recent buildings were evaluated under the light of the gathering parameters. The proximity of the beach to the study area, depend on this closeness of underground water to the surface, looseness of the deposits and shalowness of the exacavated surficial foundations form a great risk for buildings. In fact, it is observed that working in the foundation becomes impossible due to water, also excavation depth can not be increased due to same reason. Several promblems such as cracking, fracturing and settlements have been occured in the buildings due to low strength, high compressibility and heteregenous distributions of Pleistocene-Recent deposits and continuously increasing of the static loads sourced from the human activities. The principal aim of this study is to determine the accordance degree of examined lithological parameters to these apparent negative conditions. Ground properties of this area were determined with using the previous ground investigations and observation from the field observations and investigation trenchs during this study. Several tests were performed over the undisturbed and disturbed ground samples in order to determine the basic physical and mechanical properties of them. Shear strength parameters of sand sized coarse-grained deposits were fixed by drained shear box test. These loose deposits placed in SP ground type and has a high liquefaction potential, thus this state expressly that these regions are carrying the risks in the view of construction. However, it is observed that, in this region multi-layered buildings are still rapidly continuing construction.

Key Words: Pleistocene-Recent deposits; Loose deposits; Mersin; Geotechnical properties.

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