Centrifugal test of a road embankment built after new dredger fill on thick marine clay

Abstract

The construction of a 100-km road network is planned on a land reclamation area in the Oujiang Estuary in China. The embankment had a height of 4 m and a base width of 60 m. The reclamation area is newly filled by a 3-m dredger fill on a 48-m thick layer of marine clay. Estimation of the settlement of the future road network is difficult. To guide the construction of the road network, a 1/100-scale centrifuge model test was performed with a marine clay sample from the construction site to simulate the layered settlements and evaluate the drainage effect of prefabricated vertical drains in the dredger fill in the following 10 years. The results of the centrifuge modeling test are verified by 10-month in situ monitoring, which shows agreement between the centrifuge modeling test results and the in situ results. The test results indicate that additional time is needed to reinforce the newly added dredger fill by the surcharge preloading method to uplift the elevation of the reclamation area with dredger fill.