Fully coupled solution for the consolidation of poroelastic soil around geosynthetic encased stone columns

Abstract

The paper presents an extension of a recently developed fully coupled elastoplastic method (Pulko and Logar, 2016) for the analysis of a poroelastic thick-walled soil cylinder around an elastoplastic end-bearing stone column to account for the influence of an elastic geosynthetic encasement. The method was developed in the framework of Biot's consolidation theory (Biot, 1941) and is based on a unit cell concept, wherein the column encasement is modeled as a thin elastic membrane, which can only sustain tension and acts in the radial direction. Analytical closed-form expressions for excess pore pressures, stresses, strains, displacements and encasement forces were derived in the Laplace domain. The final elastoplastic solution in time domain was obtained numerically by using efficient numerical scheme for the inverse Laplace transform. The validity of the solution was checked against finite element analyses and compared with previously developed analytical methods. The results showing the influence of column encasement on transient state of settlements, strains, excess pore pressures and encasement forces under instantaneous or time dependent load are presented and discussed.