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According to some studies, flat roofs are one of the construction elements that most frequently suffer from damage and anomalies. It is important to carry out a verification of the execution processes of waterproofing membranes to reduce the number of failures as much as possible and prevent future associated damages. This paper details the 47 evaluation parameters that were applied to 61 construction projects, rated in terms of their quality in five levels of importance of the deficiencies, based on the supervision performed by quality control entities during the execution of the works. The results numerically demonstrate the importance of prior supervision of project design to produce more satisfactory results and reduce the probability of problems in the future. The most common problems in flat roofs with bituminous membranes are identified and rated, of which issues concerning the tail-ends with peripheral elements stand out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an application of a coupled hydromechanical formulation for compacted and rockfill materials to simulate the construction and impoundment of a zoned earth dam. The constitutive relation used to model the mechanical behavior of the shoulder, filter and core materials is the Barcelona Basic Model for unsaturated materials. The hydraulic behavior of dam materials requires the specification of their water retention characteristics and their permeabilities, which will be expressed as a function of porosity and degree of saturation. The model was used in the design stage of Lechago’s dam (Teruel, Spain), currently under construction. Soil parameters were obtained by laboratory tests performed on materials to be used in the dam. The step-by-step construction (following the sequence construction of nine horizontal layers, besides the downstream preloading layers) and subsequent impounding of the reservoir was simulated in a prediction exercise, which will be hopefully confronted with actual construction measurements in the near future. A parametric study was also performed to evaluate the effects of the compaction water content of the core material on the behavior of the dam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]