Despite some 9% of Norway's area being underlain by peat the geotechnical characteristics of the material have not been well documented. As peatlands form an excellent carbon sink there is much pressure on planning authorities to avoid the excavation of peat for infrastructure development. In engineering projects in peat often the resulting settlements both in the short and long term are of greatest concern. Because of the high variability of peat, several, largely empirically based, methods exist for predicting settlement on peat. These were often developed based on specific cases. These techniques have shown to be inadequate to generically predict long term creep settlements and the development of settlement with time. Here the engineering characteristics of peat from several sites in the Trondheim area of mid-Norway are studied using a series of field and laboratory tests including three types of oedometer test. The laboratory and field data, together with empirical correlations found in the literature, were used to provide input into the commercially available constitutive model Soft Soil Creep (SSC) in the computer code PLAXIS. The model was initially calibrated using the laboratory test results and then applied to the back-analysis of two full scale field trials in the Trondheim area, where the peat properties were significantly different. The modelling showed that SSC captured well the vertical settlement versus time behaviour of the peat. Guidance is provided for selecting the critical input parameters for SSC such as stiffness, yield stress and permeability. This work contributes towards efforts being made to bridge the gap between the numerical modelling community and practicing engineers.

尽管挪威约 9% 的地区被泥炭覆盖，但该材料的岩土特性尚未得到很好的记录。由于泥炭地形成了极好的碳汇，规划当局面临着很大的压力，以避免为基础设施开发而挖掘泥炭。在泥炭工程项目中，产生的短期和长期沉降通常是最受关注的问题。由于泥炭的高度可变性，存在几种主要基于经验的方法来预测泥炭上的沉降。这些通常是根据具体情况开发的。这些技术已被证明不足以普遍预测长期蠕变沉降和沉降随时间的发展。在这里，挪威中部特隆赫姆地区的几个地点的泥炭的工程特性通过一系列现场和实验室测试进行了研究，其中包括三种类型的土壤密度计测试。实验室和现场数据以及在文献中发现的经验相关性被用于为计算机代码 PLAXIS 中的商用本构模型 Soft Soil Creep (SSC) 提供输入。该模型最初是使用实验室测试结果校准的，然后应用于特隆赫姆地区两个全尺寸现场试验的反向分析，其中泥炭特性显着不同。建模表明，SSC 很好地捕捉了泥炭的垂​​直沉降与时间行为。为选择 SSC 的关键输入参数提供了指导，例如刚度、屈服应力和渗透率。这项工作有助于弥合数值建模社区和实践工程师之间的差距。