The Impact of Rising Ground Water Level on the Geotechnical Behavior of Soil in Hot Climate Regions

The continuous development and industrial changes in Saudi Arabia necessitates large ground water exploitation and brought about significant changes to the ground water regime. The alarming evidence of rising shallow ground water level and the widespread structural problems have mitigate the extra demand to develop special geotechnical awareness, standard testing and designing procedures to minimize the impact of wetting on soil behavior in the hot climate region. Field and laboratory test results on typical soil samples have established the influence of rising moisture and exemplified the adverse levels of collapse manifested by the large reduction in shearing strength and the considerable volume change upon wetting. The sensitivity of the aggressive and structurally vulnerable soil in the area to the water ingress have been evaluated. Geotechnical procedures to estimate collapse potential with means to control and limit the rising ground water level have been addressed