Abstract: It is an important topic to predict the settlement, especially post construction settlement, of high fill foundations, which is encountered more and more often in the mountainous areas in western China. However, both the calculation model and calculation method are to be studied further. The characteristics, application scope and parameter values of the hyperbolic model are discussed first; and then the creep mechanism of rockfills is also discussed in depth, especially the reason that creep under laboratory test conditions always finishes in a shorter period than that under filled conditions is explained. After that, a simplified calculation method is proposed to calculate the creep deformation for high fill foundation with uniform thickness in a large area, in which load variations during creep can be properly considered. The rationality and feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical comparisons. Besides, by analyzing the results of laboratory tests, the significant relationship between dry-wet cycle deformation and cycle numbers is found, on the basis of which a simplified coupling calculation method that can simultaneously compute the creep deformation and dry-wet cycle deformation is also proposed. Finally, the post construction settlement of a practical engineering project is predicted by the proposed method.

Key words: high fill, rockfills, creep, dry-wet cycle, simplified calculation method