Enchanching the soft soil by installation of vertical stone
column fileed with crushed concrete debris
Stone columns are generally used to improve the bearing capacity of clay deposit in coastal areas. When the clay is very soft, consumption of stone is very high to develop the required axial capacity. Encasement of stone column provides the necessary lateral restraint and enhances the bearing capacity. In order to understand the Behavior of encapsulated stone columns, Triaxial testing of encased stone columns was carried out. Geotextiles was used to encase the crushed concrete debris. Triaxial tests were carried out on 50mm and 75mm diameter columns at three confining pressures. These tests were analyzed numerically by axisymmetric modeling using PLAXIS software. Stone Column Applications 1. Increased Bearing Capacity 2. Reduction of Total and Differential Settlement 3. Expedites Consolidation Settlement 4. Liquefaction Mitigation The degree of improvement of a soft soil by stone columns is due to two factors. The first one is inclusion of a stiffer column material (such as crushed stones, gravel in the soft soil. The second factor is the densification of the surrounding soft soil during the installation of the Vibrocompacted stone column itself and the subsequent consolidation process occurring in the soft soil before the final loading of improved soil. The installation of vibrocompacted stone columns leads to an improvement of the in situ soft soil characteristics and, consequently, enhances the load displacement response of the reinforced soil. Plate load tests were conducted on a model footing resting on clay reinforced with stone columns on a square tank. Tests were performed after reinforcing the soil by introducing the stone columns of 0.4B and 0.57B diameter (where B is size of footing) filled by CCD and natural aggregate at different locations. As number of vertical column increased the stiffness of ground increase which increases in ultimate bearing capacity of column.
The bearing capacity increased from 320(N C=0) to 1200 kN/m2
(NC=13 L/B=3) for CCD at DC/B=0.57and in case of NA it is improved up to 1350 kN/m2 for NC=13 (L/B=3) at DC/B=0.57. this may be due to the fact that stiffer response is shown by soil bed as number of stone column increase.