Abstract
Foundations on soft cohesive soil suffer from excessive settlement and low bearing capacity. In practice, vibro-displacement stone columns are widely used as cost-effective and environmentally friendly soil improvement technique. The high strength and stiffness of stone columns enhance the bearing capacity and reduce the settlement of the foundations.
The parameters governing the performance of these columns are geometry (column length, diameter, and spacing), stiffness of stone columns material, and properties of surrounding soil. This paper presents a new sophisticated laboratory testing technique to examine the performance of clay soil reinforced by single and groups of stone columns. In this technique, for the first time, the effect of the compaction energy utilized during stone columns installation process was examined. In addition, the influence of spacing between stone columns on the shearing resistance of reinforced clay soil was investigated.
It was concluded that increasing the compaction energy improves the performance of stone columns at the same replacement ratio. It is of interest to know that single stone column exhibited better capacity as if it was installed in a group of columns, particularly for high replacement ratio. Also, increasing the spacing between stone columns reduces the total shear resistance of the reinforced soil.
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The financial support received from National research council of Canada and Concordia University are acknowledged.
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Hanna, A., Khalifa, M., Rahman, M.A. (2019). Experimental Investigation on Stone Columns in Cohesive Soil. In: Shehata, H., Poulos, H. (eds) Latest Thoughts on Ground Improvement Techniques. GeoMEast 2018. Sustainable Civil Infrastructures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01917-4_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01917-4_14
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