Microstructures of different soil layers caused by the high-rise building group in Shanghai

The engineering characteristics of soils are controlled by the state of the microstructure of soils to a great extent. With the withdrawal of groundwater controlled reasonably, the engineering-environmental effect of the high-rise building group becomes the main cause of land subsidence in Shanghai. This paper studied the microstructure of each soil layer under the building loads in the centrifuge model by the scanning electron microscopy and the mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) for qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, respectively. The shape, size and contact condition of the basic unit of the soil microstructure were analyzed. The pore structure of each soil layer was studied by MIP, and the pore distribution of each soil layer was studied by the fractal theory. The ink-bottle effect exists in the intrusion stage in the MIP test. There are four different fractal dimensions for silty clay of layer No. 4 and clayey soil of layer No. 8 and three different fractal dimensions for silty sand of layer No. 7 and layer No. 9. The micro and macro mechanisms of land subsidence caused by the high-rise building group were analyzed.