Abstract
Pearl Jumeira is an artificial offshore land formation located in Jumeira Beach in the Arabian Gulf and is constructed from Dubai-sourced reclaimed sand and locally sourced rockworks. Reclaimed sand was dredged from known borrow pits in Dubai waters. The island will cover approximately 8.3 million square feet of land (fully serviced with all infrastructure requirements) consisting of more than 3.0 million square feet of residential villa plots and over 90,000 square feet of retail, community, and educational facilities. The current paper presents a geotechnical case study on this reclaimed island in terms of: The geotechnical design, the construction stages, and the ground investigation results. In the geotechnical design stage, soil properties of the reclaimed land were investigated to achieve the design bearing capacity and to assess the risk of liquefaction. In the geotechnical construction stage, soil improvement technologies such as vibro compaction and surface compaction were used. In the soil investigation stage, a set of soil tests were conducted in order to achieve the geotechnical design. These tests include Standard Penetration Test (SPT), Unconfined Compressive Strength Test (UCS), Piezocone Penetration Tests (CPTU), Zone Load Test, Particle Size Distribution (Sieve Analysis), etc.... The thickness of the reclamation fill varies across the site but is typically in the order of 10 m to 15 m and consists primarily of clean sand with lenses of silty materials. The materials below the pre-reclamation seabed comprise of layers of sand and silty materials of varying thicknesses, underlain by the Calcisiltite/Calcarenite bedrock between -10 m and -15 m Dubai Municipality Datum (DMD).
