An Assessment of Soil Collapsibility Due Dissolution of Salts

Since the building of first dike in the Dead Sea (DS) 60 years ago, the DS harsh environment sparks new geotechnical challenges. The DS level as well as the surrounding ground water table continued to drop severely. The DS level drops 35 m from 392 mbsl in late 1950s to around 423 mbsl in 2011. Recently, the rate of descending is 1.2 m/year and is on brink to increase. The dramatically dropping of the DS level pushes fresh water brackish water divide and generates numerous sink holes in the southern part of the east coast of the DS. The thing that costs more than $100 million investments lost. Moreover, the stability of foundations soil of many existing projects and in a construction stages were at risk. Therefore, a Soil samples of CL-ML were prepared to mimic the changes occur on the soil in vicinity of the east cost of the Dead Sea due to fresh water movement. The main goal of this modification was to examine the effect of salts dissolution on the collapse potential of the soil. A detailed findings will presented and analyzed