Abstract:  As the highway engineering developing rapidly, a lot of high level roads were constructed. To improve the mobility of the road, much soil-filled embankments were built. There was little research on the settlement of the embankments. The result of the embankment settlement, which was calculated by the ordinary layering summation method, is different from the monitored data. On the basis of the layering fill characteristics of the embankment, we improve the layering summation method that can be applied to rigid and soft base. A numerical example was calculated in comparison the improved method with the numerical calculation method, and the results were basically in accordance. The results indicated that the improved layering method can be a simple empirical method to calculate the settlement of the embankment.

Key words: embankments settlement , layering fill , improved layering summation method