An investigation of Beirut soil properties

Abstract

The aim of this study is to set a foundation for mapping Beirut soils using available soil reports obtained from excavations. With the availability of a certain number of excavations and soil reports, one could attempt to gather soil data in order to understand the subbase and map the stratigraphy of the city. However, only a limited number of boreholes and soil data are available. Consequently, the use of innovative methods to analyze and assess limited numbers of heterogeneous data is necessary for developing countries where data is generally scarce. The paper investigates the available soil report data, specifically soil cohesion (c), soil friction angle (φ), and soil type classification. The results show that soil cohesion and the soil friction angle of Beirut have a high negative correlation r2 = -0.71. Then, a mixture of Gaussians (MG) clustering approach is utilized to find meaningful patterns in the data, and thus resulting in three categories according to which the soil is to be mapped in future work. The categories are related to ranges in values of c and φ and their corresponding soil types.