Soil Type in Bangladesh

The major part of Bangladesh is on the delta which is formed by the three major rivers
Brahmaputra, Ganges and Meghna. These rivers and others minor rivers originate outside the
national boundary of the country and make up the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river
system. The system drains a basin of 1.76 million sq km and carries not only snowmelt water
from the Himalayas but also runoff water from some of the highest rainfall areas of the
world. Over millennia, the sediments carried by the huge discharges of these rivers have built
a broad delta, forming most of the large area of Bangladesh and the submerged delta-plain in
the Bay of Bengal. These huge sediments are the major sources of formation of 80% soils of
the country. The remaining 20% of soils have been formed in Tertiary and Quaternary
sediments of hills (12%) and in uplifted Pleistocene Terrace (8%).
The Soil Resources Development Institute (SRDI) has identified about 500 soil series in
Bangladesh. Soil series is a group of soils formed from the same kind of parent material
under similar conditions of drainage, vegetation, climate and time, and having the same
sequence of soil horizons with similar differentiating properties. Each soil series is known
after a name of locality (eg Tejgaon series, Sara series, Ishwardi series, etc.).

Soil Type in Bangladesh

Over the past 50 years, Dhaka, the Capital of Bangladesh, has experienced a rapid growth of
urban population. This high population increase demands rapid expansion of the city.
Unfortunately, most parts of Dhaka having competent subsoil for building construction are
already exhausted. As such, new areas are being reclaimed by both government and private
agencies using dredged fill from nearby river sources. A very soft organic layer exists below
the filling layer that is highly plastic and highly compressible. SPT N values of filling layer
and organic layer vary from 2 to 11 and 1 to 2, respectively. It is observed that settlement of
the organic layer varied from about 242 mm to 637 mm in between 1.8 to 12.7 years,
respectively, due to overburden pressure of 100 kPa. Moreover, the existing organic layer
may cause negative skin friction to the pile foundation and make foundation difficulties.
Some test samples are given below:

In the south-west coastal districts, sub-soils are consisting of fine grained soil deposits
predominantly peat and muck. The peat deposits extend south-west coastal districts through
Satkhira to Patuakhali. Due to the existence of these alluvial deposits with organic substance,
the soil is soft and compressible. Practicing engineers are facing many difficulties to solve the
several geotechnical engineering problems such as very large total and differential
settlements, bearing capacity failure and slope stability problem.
Example of structure failure, recently a 9 story building was collapsed near Dhaka resulted
more than thousand people died and more than two thousand people injured. Researchers
have found many reason about the failure of that building, one of reason is soil condition.
That building was built on a pond area which was refilled with sand. Another example of
failure, due to heavy flood, failure of embankment is become common in every year. The
cause of failure of all the flood control embankments could be attributed to erosion and
sliding of embankment materials due to river encroachment and mitigation. Slope stability
analyses of the Padma and Jamuna flood control embankments revealed that the country side
slopes of both the embankments are not at all stable during the monsoon when the water level
is high. The Jamuna flood control embankment is not stable even before and after the
monsoon period because the factor of safety calculated for the country side slopes are less
than that of the recommended one.