A thesis submitted in partial fulfillments oi the requirements for the degree of Master or Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1984

The coastal areas of Peninsular Malaysia comprise mainly of soft coastal alluvial deposits of Cenozoic age. With the increasing pace of industrialization and urbanization process, there have been large number of projects planned and under way in these regions. More and more civil engineering structures have been constructed on these alluvium, including embankments, air-fields, buildings, drainage and irrigation structures, and marine structures. These soft alluvium usually pose geotechnical problems and adversely affect the constructional procedure from the economic standpoint. Thus this prevalent situation coupled with the scarce geologic information available has necessitated impetus to review the geotechnical characteristics and the nature of these sediments. With all the available borehole data, soil grain properties and soil aggregate properties, subsoil profiles, compressibility properties, index properties, total and effective strength parameters would be presented. The Well known correlation between the ratio Su-Po', (Su-undrained shear strength; Po' - effective overburden Pressure), and the plasticity index; and the relationship between compression index, Cc, and the compression ration, CR, with the natural water content and the liquid limit world be examined. In order to estimate the soil compressibility by means of simple and quick method, empirical relations as a simple linear function of soil parameters (natural water content and liquid limit) would be expressed as linear regression equations of various areas along the coastline, The relationship of plasticity index as a function of liquid limit would also be include. Apart from these, generalized subsoil profiles of the coastal plains at various locations would also be constructed and included in this study. This review of these deposits is made with the hope that insights into their characteristics and nature of the deposition would provide additional information for the preliminary cost estimates and serve as guidelines and supplementary design data for projects with only little available soil investigation data. In addition it it desired that the implementation of projects in such areas can be carried out more effectively and economically.