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In the southeastern region of the Mexican Republic that borders coastal lines, the subsoil is made up of alluvial deposits from the rivers that flow into the Gulf of Mexico, which include sands, silts, clays and peats, most of them have low resistance to shear stress and high compressibility, so any structure displaced on them can present bad behavior. Usually, it is necessary to apply one or more construction techniques to correct angular inclination that can affected buildings stability. Besides is necessary to perform some type of ground improvement to the foundation subsoil in order to reduce the settlements magnitude. Among these techniques we can mention underexcavation that aims to extract small differential volumes of soil in the highest areas of the ground foundation to level the inclined structure, reducing angular distortions. Once the construction has been re-leveled with the aforementioned procedure, the soil improvement technique can be applied by hydrofracturing injection, which objective is to inject radial grout sheets that stiffen the soil strata and reduce their deformability.
About the author
Professor Oscar A. Cuanalo Campos is Civil Engineer (BUAP), Master in Engineering (UNAM) and Doctor of Sciences (UCLV). Currently is professor-researcher at UPAEP, member of: Mexican Society of Geotechnical Engineering (SMIG), International Society of Rock Mechanics (ISRM) and emeritus member of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
