Settlement Behaviour of Deep Fill For Housing Development, Niddrie, VIC

This paper describes our experience of processing and placing about 2.4 milion cubic metres of stockpiled overburden fill into a former basalt quarry in Niddrie, Victoria.

The project encompasses many geotechnical challenges including the development of a strategy to engineer a fill platform using material varying from high plasticity basaltic clays to weathered basalt rock with boulders up to 2m in size. Critical to the residential housing development is the settlement behaviour of the engineered fill, particularly with regard to the performance of shallow footings founded on a fill thickness of up to about 35m.

At the time of preparation of this paper about 85% of the 24. million cubic metres of the stockpiled fill has ben processed and placed back into the former quarry since the commencement of the project in April 2002. Settlement monitoring in some parts of the project commenced in July 2002. An overview of the trends of the settlement data so far

The site is located on the western side of Steele Creek, a tributary of the Maribyrnong River, and is approximately 1.5km south of the Essendon Acrodrome. The site is 10km north-west of Central Melbourne, accessed via the Calder Freeway.