Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Floating Granular Piles in Soft Clays

Abstract

The installation of reinforced granular piles is a commonly adopted technique to improve load carrying capacity and reduce settlements in very soft clayey soils. This paper presents results of a series of laboratory model tests and numerical analysis carried on geosynthetic reinforced granular pile under short term loading. Unit cell concept has been adopted. Laboratory model tests were conducted on unreinforced, vertical encased, reinforced with horizontal strips and combined vertical-horizontal reinforced granular piles. The loading was applied either over the entire cylindrical tank area or only over the area of granular piles. The effects of various parameters such as reinforcement, encasement stiffness, shear strength of clay, length and diameter of granular piles have been studied. Experimental results in the form of vertical load intensitysettlement relationship have been compared with that obtained from PLAXIS 3D. The results of laboratory model tests indicated significant influence of reinforcement on the ultimate load intensity of granular piles and ultimate bearing capacity of treated ground. Lateral bulging in reinforced granular piles has also been controlled by incorporating geosynthetic materials.

The Experimental Design of Stone Columns' Modelling using Small-Scale Unit Cells: A Review

“…The reinforcement methods are presented in Table 3. A combination of horizontal and lateral reinforcement provides even better performance as reported by Hasan and Samadhiya [8,23].…”

“…The granite chips are one of the frequently used materials [9,10,30,31]. The reason behind using granite is the high strength, which prevents crushing [8,23,24]. Basic tests such as sieve analysis, direct shear, and specific gravity are common to determine the properties of the SC materials.…”

“…Some authors suggested that the column's material should be moistened before construction to prevent the absorption of moisture from the surrounding HG. The replacement method is preferred to the displacement method because the displacement method is difficult to practice in smallscale models [23]. In the case of constructing an encased column, the encasement sleeve can be fixed outside or inside the casing pipe before placing the SC's material.…”

“…Figure 4 shows the deformed shape of columns tested by Hasan and Samadhiya [8]. In addition to the load-settlement behaviour, the deformed shape of the SC can be established [8,5,12,45,23,37,52]. After the loading test is finished, the SC's material is removed carefully without disturbing the HG.…”

Characterization and finite element analysis of lime and polymer treated ultra-soft clay soils using the electrical resistivity and miniature penetrometer methods

“…Due to a lack of land in the coastal cities, ground improvement has to be done to increase the availability of land for various applications (Bo et al, 2010;Anggraini et al, 2015). Also, because of the difficulty in obtaining undisturbed soil samples of ultra-soft soils in the coastal areas or deep seawater, in situ testing are becoming more popular (Lunne, 2001;Hasan and Samadhiya, 2016). In the deep water, seabed testings have to be done to characterize the soft soil within penetration about 3 m to 5 m as required (Hawkins and Markus, 1998).…”