Salman Chaudhry

I would like to share with you guys some snaps of a building of arch.dept hostel. The subject building was constructed in 1997 and just after construction, severe cracks started propagating and made it unusable. The site selected for constructed have 35 ft fill organic material and it used to be a dump site of old Lahore. this is just to highlight the importance of geotechnical investigation and effect of differential setttlement on a small structure.

I would like to draw your attention towards cut/fill levels. Footing resting on Fill If we are placing our footing on an area which is in fill than we have "0" ov.burdron pressure in this equation q(gross)= qnet + over.burdon, hence q(g) = q(net) And we need to take the fill pressure while designing the footing. Footing resting on cut If we are placing our footing on an area which is in cut than we have " ov.burdron" pressure exists in this equation q(gross)= qnet + over.burdon, hence we can increase out bearing capacity. And we need not to take this pressure while designing the footing,because what we have excavated we have put it again,and the difference of pressure will be nothing.

waalikum assalam. Dear Waqar, berkeley associates is a good firm in lahore , they have been involved in many projects currently engaged in orange line metro . Address: 316 D, OPF Housing Colony Raiwind Road, Lahore Email: berkeley.associates@gmail.com Hotline Phone: + 92 – 42 – 35230628-9 + 92 – 42 – 35230660 some of professors in geo-technical department UET lahore are also practicing engineers CM punjab takes them on board for many crucial decisions with CM IT and they have been engaged in multiple projects like sonic testing of existing bridge piles, geo-technical evaluation of construction of Parking plaza murree, failure of highway structures in murree due to presence of organic soils.

Despite of being a structural engineer, with due regard to above statements,i would like to disagree with I personally feel that our nation has no geo-technical awareness at all. We are ready to pay architects which in turn pay a negligible amount to structural engineer, but we never bother to consult any geotechnical specialist, and many catastrophic failures are due to failure of soil not structure. we want beauty of facade and don't care about anything below grade, which in turn don't care about our structure. and in my opinion collapse of factory in lahore was also due to soil failure. Thank you