Realization of Undrained Shear Strength of Natural Deposits Using Random Field Theory

Undrained shear strength is the main parameter in most problems concerned with short-term stability or total stress analysis states (TSA). Mechanism of soil deposit formation leads to inherent variability in soil strength and stiffness parameters.Inherent variability as the primary source of uncertainty in geotechnical problems consists of deterministic and stochastic components. In this paper, a generic deterministic trend is proposed by utilizing a good amount of well-documented in-situ test data. The new concept of transformation depth was introduced as the depth where it changes from a decreasing trend to an increasing one. Random field theory and local average subdivision (LAS) technique was employed in order to produce realization of undrained shear strength. Undrained shear strength was assumed to inherit a deterministic trend in vertical direction while preserving its stochastic behavior in horizontal direction.