ABSTRACT
Monitoring of geotechnical structures which means studying their behavior during construction and operation is an important task. In order to have proper monitoring system, real information about the structure behavior is required. This information is partly provided by instrument that installed in different sections of the structure and its foundation.
Among different type of instrument, earth pressure cells are often used to measure soil pressure in fills and embankments or contact pressure between soil and buried structures. Many pressure cells installed in earth dams have not proved to be entirely satisfactory. However some types of pressure cells installed at the interface of concrete structures and earth fill have performed well.
In this article the data measured from earth pressure cells installed in three different Iranian embankment dams are used to investigate the internal consistency of the measurements from pressure cells installed in one cluster. Three methods are used for measured data evaluation, depending on the type of the available data (number of pressure cells in one plane), stage of the dam for which the data is measured and finally the location of the instruments. The methodology and results of this research are presented in this article.
Keywords: Earth pressure cell; Embankment dam; Instrumentation.
