Case History of Failure of the

Transcona Grain Elevator

 CAUSES OF FAILURES OF FOUNDATIONS AND
REMEDIAL MEASURES

The foundations may fail due to the following reasons:

1. Unequal settlement of sub-soil.

2. Unequal settlement of masonry.
3. Sub-soil moisture movement.
4. Lateral pressure on the walts.
5. Lateral Movement of sub-soil.
6. Weathering of sub-soil due to trees and shrubs.
7. Atmospheric action.
 One of the best known foundation failures
occurred in October 1913 at North Transcona , Manitoba,
Canada. It was ascertained later on that the failure occurred
when the foundation pressure at the base was about equal to
the calculated ultimate bearing capacity of an under laying
layer of plastic clay (Peck and Byrant , 1953), and was
essentially a shearing failure.
 The construction of the silo started in 1911 and was completed in
the autumn of 1913.
The silo is 77 ft by 195 ft in plan and has a capacity of 1,000,000
bushels.
It comprises 65 circular bins and 48 inter-bins.
The foundation was a reinforced concrete raft 2 ft thick and founded
at a depth of 12 ft below the ground surface.
The weight of the silo was 20,000 tons, which was 42.5 percent of
the total weight, when it was filled.
Filling the silo with grain started in September 1913, and in October
when the silo contained 875,000 bushels, and the pressure on the ground
was 94 percent of the design pressure, a vertical settlement of 1 ft was
noticed.
The structure began to tilt to the west and within twenty four hours
was at an angle of 26.9° from the vertical, the west side being 24 ft below
and the east side 5 ft above the original level (Szechy, 1961).
 The structure tilted as a monolith and there was no damage to the
structure except for a few superficial cracks.
The excellent quality of the reinforced concrete structure is shown
by the fact that later it was underpinned and jacked up on new piers
founded on rock.
The level of the new foundation is 34 ft below the ground surface.
During the period when the silo was designed and constructed, soil
mechanics as a science had hardly begun.
The behavior of the foundation under imposed loads was not clearly
understood.
It was only during the year 1952 that soil investigation was carried
out close to the silo and the soil properties were analyzed (Peck and
Byrant, 1953).
The soil classification and unconfmed compressive strength of the
soil with respect to depth.
 From the examination of undisturbed samples of the clay, it
was determined that the average water content of successive layers
of varved clay increased with their depth from 40 percent to about
60 percent.
The average unconfmed compressive strength of the upper
stratum beneath the foundation was 1.13 tsf, that of the lower
stratum was 0.65 tsf, and the weighted average was 0.93 tsf.
The average liquid limit was found to be 105 percent;
therefore the plasticity index was 70 percent, which indicates that
the clay was highly colloidal and plastic.
The average unit weight of the soil was 120 lb/ft3. The contact
pressure due to the load from the silo at the time of failure was
estimated as equal to 3.06 tsf.
The theoretical values of the ultimate bearing capacity by
various methods are as follows.