Evaluation of Engineering Properties of Rocks and Soils of a Part of the Southwestern Area of Mosul City

Abstract

The main task of this research is to study the distribution of the engineering properties of rocks and soils at the part of the area located in the south western Mosul City. The relationship of these aspects with the geology of the area and its importance of preliminary designs of structures has been studied as well. The data are collected from the reports on geological investigations and engineering laboratory testing of the proposed third canal of the South Jazirah Irrigation Project. Most of the land region is covered by the soil, that thickness ranges between 0 and nearly 20 meters and penetrated by boreholes reaching to the subsurface of evaporating, carbonate and clastic rocks of Fat’ha and Injana formations. Data processing and evaluation of 66 boreholes are used to find the statistical relations among them. The studied area was divided into four secondary regions ( northern, southern, western and eastern). The studied engineering tests have been included the physical, mechanical and dynamic properties, which have generally low values in most areas. The distribution of the means of all properties that used in the assessment of the properties of soil and rock with the relation of the geological area has shown good properties when approaching to the anticlines of Allan, Hamam Al-Aleel, Nwaigeet, Kaliyan, Al- Shorah, Kassab and Addayah. The study shows that the relationship between the liquid limit and plasticity index is good for all data. The relationship between moisture content and dry density is also good however, the relationship between moisture content and the ratio of dry and saturated density is better, because of the higher relationship between porosity and moisture content. The relationship between bulk density and the velocity of longitudinal waves reveales a sharp reduction of the velocity values of longitudinal waves with reducing of the bulk density values. While, the relationship between bulk density and shear wave velocity is better due to the effect of shear waves withthe porosity more than that of longitudinal waves. In order to confirm that, it has been found that the relationship between the shear waves velocity and moisture content is the best in contrast with a velocity of longitudinal waves. Generally, the relation between dynamic properties with moisture content has a higher correlation coefficient with that of the density. The distribution of most of the engineering properties has shown low values in eastern and western region in contrast with the northern and southern ones.