Exploring the implications of soil weight density in routine design

It is becoming more important for practicing engineers to consider the sustainability impacts and potential improvements on all aspects of their designs. For geotechnical engineers, due to the inherent uncertainty in the ground, designs are often too conservative with suggested parameters adopted with limited data available or not utilised most effectively. The dry, saturated, or partly saturated soil weight density (or unit weight) is frequently only suggested and often overlooked as an important parameter in common geotechnical problems. Rather it is the focus on the derivation and characterisation of strength and stiffness parameters which almost always take priority in routine design. The typical methods used to obtain the soil weight density are reviewed with potential improvements provided. The primary objective of this paper is to present parametric studies from common geotechnical stability problems to show the importance of the soil weight density parameter in routine design and the potential opportunities and pitfalls geotechnical engineers may face in practice.