GEOTECHNICAL VARIATION IN MARITIME WORKS AND NECESSITY OF PERFORMING GEOTECHNICAL INVESTIGATION FOR EACH SITE SEPARATELY

Gathering sufficient geotechnical information from a project area is one of the most important parts of the design phase of marine structures. Since significant variation inboth layering and geotechnical parameters alongside of shore area is expected, lack of comprehensive information about subsoil usually leads to unforeseen problems duringconstruction phase and sometimes causes great change in the project layout and/or structural system. Moreover, marine structures construction and maintenance is morecomplicated than the other ones and usually required more time and money. Therefore, appropriate planning for geotechnical investigation proportional to the project cost,is of crucial importance to save money as well as the safety. In this paper, in order to show how much the subsurface can be variable in a shoreline area and to show theimportance of adequate site investigation, the results of some geotechnical studies performed for a part of Persian Gulf coastal area in Hormozgan province, Iran, areassessed here. As a result, necessity of new geotechnical investigation for a new project near the ones that have field investigation is obvious. In the following, somerecommendations for geotechnical investigation derived from international maritime codes are presented.