The case study consists of a piled embankment built over a very soft, organic compressible clay layer 10 m deep. The height of the embankment supported on piles was about 1·3 m, and the piles, which measured 0·18 m × 0·18 m, were spaced 2·5 m apart in a square pattern, with 0·8 m wide square pile caps covered with a bidirectional 200 kN/m geogrid polyester reinforcement. A region of the piled supported embankment was instrumented to provide a better understanding of the overall embankment-reinforcement-pile cap system. Three-dimensional and two-dimensional pile layouts were adopted. An excavation of 1 m under the geogrid was carried out to induce rapid load transference to the geogrid. The settlement in between pile caps was 0·10–0·4 m, whereas settlements in the region under similar embankment heights were much higher, thus demonstrating the efficacy of pile-supported embankments with geogrids in controlling settlements. Strains at the reinforcement were also measured, and showed values in the range 0·25–2·05%.
The paper analyses the performance of an embankment built on a very soft and extremely compressible organic clay where prefabricated vertical drains have been installed. Coefficients of horizontal consolidation, ch, obtained from settlement analyses took into account the smear resulting from the installation of the drains and also the vertical drainage. These values of ch are compared with the measurements obtained from special laboratory tests with drains installed in the sample, and from in-situ tests using the piezocone. The three sets of figures showed good agreement with each other, which suggests that the secondary consolidation was negligible compared with the primary consolidation in the case herein, in which vertical drains were used.
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