Geotechnical Perspective of the Causes of Cracks in Building of University Campus (Sindh University Jamshoro Sindh Pakistan)

 

Abstract

Building construction throughout the world faces defects from normal to heavy and destructive like cracks and fractures which cause damages and finally collapse to heavy life losses along with economical and financial. The crack-like structures are found in walls and columns also. For the purpose of study, the international experts have classified the smallest allowable standards of these defects which may not be harmful to buildings and people living there. This research study has been carried out to investigate the main reasons to investigate the causes of cracks in newly completed and used buildings in where some distinct cracks appeared immediately and after some years. Often these cracks seem almost in walls and other structural elements such as columns and beams, with different patterns. The general methods consisting of reconnaissance survey; building inspection and laboratory testing were used to investigate the causes of these detrimental cracks. By the use of a reconnaissance survey, factors that may lead to the formation of cracks were considered and analyzed. The width, pattern, and conditions of the cracks were identified during the building inspection stage and the soil properties related to the creation of cracks were determined during the laboratory test. Based on the outcome of the study; there is no evidence of factors such as a matured system that may lead to the creation of cracks in the building; all the cracks are active cracks with their width increasing with time and the soils in the entire block of the building possessed high percentage of fine materials with high moisture content and plasticity indices. The pore water pressure in this type of soil takes a long time to vanish, which can be expressed by the very low value of the coefficient of permeability (1.90x 10-7 to 2.15 x 10-7 m/s) acquired from different soil samples collected from the study area. Hence the cracks in this type of buildings were found to be caused by the settlement of the building due to the nature of the main soil type that was found in the study area.

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