Journal of Advances in Geotechnical Engineering

Volume 4 Issue 1

Mechanism of Geocell Reinforcement in Soft Soils-A Review

Miria Jerald1*, Kannan K.2
1
Student, 2Assistant Professor
Department of Civil Engineering, Marian Engineering College, Trivandrum, Kerala, India.

*Corresponding Author
E-mail Id:-riyajerald24@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Infrastructural development is the most important need in present time. Geocell
reinforcement is a technique developed for soft soil reinforcement, which is being
increasingly used for construction of roads and embankments. All round confinement to the
materials is provided by the geocells and thus lateral spreading of the foundation soil on load
application is prevented to a great extend. HDPE (high density polyethylene) geocells are the
most commonly used geocell type in present time. The three-dimensional, honey comb like
structure can provide lateral confinement to soil particles within the geocell pockets.The
current paper summarizes the mechanism of geocell reinforcement in soft soils. Geocell
reinforcement reduces the magnitude of final settlement and the zone between 0.3B to 0.5B
maximize the benefits of soil reinforcement.

Keywords:-geocell, infill material, reinforcement, 3D confinement

INTRODUCTION construction procedure. Geocell

Infrastructural development is the most
important need in present time. To fulfill
the infrastructural need of population,
small multi-story buildings, express
highways, high speed rail tracks, new
bridges, airports etc. are to be constructed.
Nowadays due to space constrains,
construction takes place over poor soil.
Construction over weak soils without
proper subsurface investigations leads to
severe damages to the overlying structures.
Placement of higher loads over poor soils
is one of the major challenges faced by
civil engineers. In such situations, weak
soils are replaced by strong soils or
enhancing the engineering properties of
weak soils is done. If it is not applicable,
ground improvement techniques are
adopted to improve the load carrying
capacity and to reduce the settlement of
the soft foundation bed. The introduction
of geosynthetics as reinforcement has
significantly reduced the cost of ground
improvement and simplified the
reinforcement is a recent technique
developed for reinforcing soft soils. This
technique is extensively used for
construction of roads and embankments.
Unique structure of geocell provides all
round confinement to the foundation soil
and hence it prevents the lateral spreading
of soil on load application. Thus the
geocell reinforcement helps in increasing
the strength and stiffness properties and
thereby bringing about higher load
carrying capacity of the weaker soil.
GEOCELL
Geocell (Figure 1) is a three dimensional,
polymeric, honeycomb like structure of
cells interconnected at the joints that
provide effective confinement of the
encapsulated soil against being pushed
away from the region under loading.
Research and development of cellular
confinement systems began with the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers in September
1975. Due to the unique 3D structure,

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 Journal of Advances in Geotechnical Engineering
cellular confinement systems have more
attractive features than any other planar
geosynthetic reinforcement. Thus an
increase occurs in overall effectiveness of
confinement provided by geocells. Sand
grids made up of paper soaked in phenolic
water resistant resins were considered as
the predecessors of present geocells. Later
metallic geocells, made of aluminum were
chosen because of strength requirements,
but they proved unfeasible due to handling
Fig.1:-Geocell & Soil reinforced with geocell
LOAD TRANSFER MECHANISM
By comparing unreinforced base and
geocell reinforced base, it was seen that
geocell reinforced base can provide lateral
and vertical confinement, tensioned
membrane effect and wider stress
distribution. All these effects contributes
in increasing the strength and stiffness
characteristics of the weak foundation soil.
Dash et al.[4] demonstrated the advantages
of the geocell as compared with other
planar and randomly distributed mesh
elements. The study conducted, concluded
that the confinement by the geocell
created a better composite material,
redistributed the footing load over a wider
area and thus reduced the final settlement
to a larger extend. The lateral confinement
of soil particles within the geocell pockets
is provided by the three-dimensional
structure of geocells. The geocell provides
vertical confinement in two ways;
i) The friction between the infill material
and the geocell wall.
ii) The geocell reinforced base acts as a
mattress to restrain the soil moving
upward outside the loading area.
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Volume 4 Issue 1
difficulty and high cost. Geogrid sheets
jointed by bodkin joints are also used for
making geocells. Nowadays, high density
polyethylene (HDPE) is the most
extensivel yused polymer for making
geocells by welding extruded HDPE strips
together to form honey combs. Geocell can
provide better lateral confinement to
surrounding soils and infill soils within
geocell pockets.
The tensioned membrane effect is referred
to as the tension developed in the curved
geocell reinforced mattress to resist the
vertical load. Due to the height of the
geocell, the geocell-reinforced mattress
more likely provides a beam or plate effect
than tensioned membrane effect. The
confinement of the geocell increases the
stiffness of the reinforced base thus having
a wider stress distribution than the
unreinforced base. Zhao et al.[2] indicated
that the geocell reinforced base can
provide bending resistance, tensile
strength, and shear strength and intercept
the failure planes from the subgrade.
Understanding of these mechanisms
originated from cyclic plate load tests, but
later research was focused on these
mechanisms under cyclic loading.
Zhao et al.[2] reviewed the geocell
reinforced layers under embankments and
suggested that the main geocell layer
functions in three aspects:
1. Lateral resistance effect
2. Vertical stress dispersion effect
3. Membrane effect
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 Journal of Advances in Geotechnical Engineering
Lateral Resistance Effect
A geocell consists of three-dimensional
cells that contain, confine and reinforce a
variety of filled materials within its cell
pockets. It completely arrests the lateral
spreading and increase the shear strength
of filled materials. The interfacial
resistance developed from the interaction
between geocell reinforcement and the
soils below and above reinforcement,
results in increasing the lateral
confinement and lowering the lateral
strain. Thus there occurs an increase in
modulus of the cushion layer and
improving vertical stress distribution on
the subgrade which is called “vertical
stress dispersion effect”. Correspondingly,
a reduction in vertical pressure on the top
of the subgrade also occurs.
Vertical Stress Dispersion Effect
As reported above in the lateral stress
dispersion effect, the horizontal geocell
reinforced cushion behaves as an
immediate working platform which
redistributes the footing load per unit area
over a wider area. This effect is referred as
‘‘stress dispersion effect’’. As a result of
this, the soil-pressure onto the soft
subgrade soil surface becomes much
smaller than the soil-pressure onto the
subgrade soil in the absence of geocell.
Membrane Effect
The vertical loads from the embankment
deflect the geocell reinforcement thus
generate a further tension force. The
vertical component of the tension force
developed in the geocell reinforcement
helps in reducing the pressure acting on
the subgrade soil. Thus the vertical
deformation occurring due to load acting
on the soft subgrade is reduced and the
bearing capacity of the subgrade soil is
enhanced as well. As the depth of the ruts
increases the deformed shape of the
geocell reinforcement, the reinforcement
can provide a further tension due to this
membrane effect.
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Volume 4 Issue 1
Chung and Cascante[5] using footing
width as B have identified that a zone
between 0.3B to 0.5B maximize the
benefits of soil reinforcement. They
noticed that the accommodation of
reinforcements within one footing width
below the foundation can lead to an
increase in bearing capacity ratio (BCR)
and the low strain stiffness of the
reinforced system. This increase is due to
the transferring of the foundation loading
to deeper soil layers as well as a reduction
in stresses and strains underneath the
foundation.
CONCLUSION
 The magnitude of final settlement is
reduced to a great extend by the
provision of geocell reinforcement.
 Zone between 0.3B to 0.5B maximize
the benefits of soil reinforcement.
 Higher load carrying capacity is
achieved by transmitting the footing
load to a deeper depth by providing
geocell mattress.
 Effect of underground voids and
results due to differential loading can
be further studied.
REFERENCES
1. Dhane, G., Kumar, D., &Priyadarshee,
A. (2015). Geocell: An emerging
Technique of soil reinforcement in
civil engineering field. Journal of
Mechanical and Civil Engineering
(IOSR-JMCE), 59-63.
2. Zhang, L., Zhao, M., Shi, C., & Zhao,
H. (2010). Bearing capacity of geocell
reinforcement in embankment
engineering. Geotextiles and
Geomembranes, 28(5), 475-482.
3. Aparna, S.,Aswathy, S., Jayamohan J.
(2016). Improving bearing capacity of
footings using geocells. IJSER,7,124-
129.
4. Dash, S. K., Krishnaswamy, N. R., &
Rajagopal, K. (2001). Bearing
capacity of strip footings supported on
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 Journal of Advances in Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 4 Issue 1

geocell-reinforced sand. Geotextiles strain stiffness and bearing capacity of

and Geomembranes, 19(4), 235-256. shallow foundations. Geotechnical
5. Chung, W., & Cascante, G. (2007). and Geological Engineering, 25(3),
Experimental and numerical study of 265-281.
soil-reinforcement effects on the low-

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