EFFECT OF CONSTRUCTING HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WITHOUT A GEOPHYSICAL SURVEY

Adagunodo, T. A. and Sunmonu, L. A. and Oladejo, Olagoke Peter (2014) EFFECT OF CONSTRUCTING HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS WITHOUT A GEOPHYSICAL SURVEY. Effect of Constructing High Rise Buildings. pp. 91-100.

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Abstract

Subsidence and building collapse has become immense globally which Nigeria is not exempted. Due to increase in the number of people living in urban area and increase in the value of land, high-rise buildings have become preferred choice for people. Some of the high-rise buildings in urban areas have become death traps for the people living within because of cracks, subsidence, transport of water from subsurface to the supporting walls of the building, and finally sudden collapse. People direct the blame on the contractor whenever there are tragic situations like that. Majority believes that the contractor must have used inferior building materials before there can be such situation. The truth is that subsurface is heterogeneous in nature, if proper geophysical survey is not carried out before the building construction starts, the constructed building especially high-rise building might stand the chance of falling into this tragic event. The aim of carrying out this research is to settle the dispute between a house owner along Oda Road, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria and his contractor. Vivid cracks were seen from a high-rise building after the construction works have finished which made the owner to believe that the contractor has used the inferior building materials for him. Eight Vertical Electrical Sounding (VES) stations were occupied around the house in order to know the subsurface information of the study area. The maximum current electrode used was 300 m with the maximum Geometric Factor of 7069.58. Six VES curves showed H-type (i.e. 3-layer earth model) while the remaining two VES curves showed KH-type (i.e. 4-layer earth model). The overburden thickness information of the study area varied between 14.9 m and 39.6 m with an average value of 28.3 m. This overburden is relatively thick for a high-rise building without an artificial basement before the foundation is laid. The weathered layer isoresistivity varied between 102.8  m and 258  m with an average value of 160.4125  m. This was done in order to know the characteristics of weathered layer in the study area, whether it will permit the transport of water from subsurface to the supporting walls of the building or not. The result showed that the apparent resistivities of the weathered layer’s value constitute little and medium weathering processes with poor potential for groundwater. Therefore, water cannot be transported from the subsurface to the supporting walls of the building. The contractor has his blame because geophysicist should have been invited for geophysical survey before the construction works started. Finally, it was recommended that mega activities like party, playing of heavy acoustic music, manual pounding of yams within the building, use of heavily vibrated machines should be avoided in the building.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Building Collapse, Building Construction, Geophysical Survey, Overburden Thickness, Subsidence, Vertical Electrical Sounding
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General) Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Physics
Depositing User:	Mrs Hannah Akinwumi
Date Deposited:	18 Jan 2018 08:05
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2018 08:05
URI:	http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/10067

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