干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The buildings in arid or desert areas with wet periods and potentially expansive soils require a foundation design of lightweight houses to identify possible additional charges due to the expansiveness of the soil, or should allow the volumetric change due to moisture content changes without affecting the foundations. Comodoro Rivadavia soils have a very high expansive potential as presented in Ruiz, Vargas & Manzanal (2012) and produce major problems in houses when appropriate measures are not taken. Constructive pathologies have legal consequences for professionals such as civil engineers and architects. This work presents the study of a two-floor family house that presented a constructive pathology due to expansive clays. The studies taken previous to the construction and design to foundational and construction aspects that failed are described in detail. Failure mechanisms that occurred in different areas of the house were analyzed too. The results of the study of soils involved are summarized and a series of recommendations to implement foundations in expansive soils is presented too. Constructive aspects of remediation adopted for the case study are also summarized.