Abstract
Preloading with a surcharge is today commonly used together with prefabricated vertical drains for embankment construction on clayey soil to accelerate primary consolidation and increase strength. Because of considerable uncertainty related mainly to the rate of consolidation, there is a need to account for this in the vertical drain and surcharge design to ensure quality in the embankment construction. Addressing this issue, the paper presents a novel probabilistic design methodology that is compatible with the observational method. The procedure evaluates the suitable surcharge load to be used in combination with a vertical drain design in order to ensure that the established design criteria are satisfied with acceptable probability.
Highlights
Preloading with a surcharge is today commonly used together with prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) for embankment construction on clayey soil to accelerate primary consolidation and increase strength
This paper presents a novel probabilistic design procedure based on the observational method (Peck, 1969)
Considering that the presented design procedure agrees with the definition of the observational method (CEN, 2004), this paper addresses the request for studies on applications and proper use of the observational method that was expressed at the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) symposium held in 1995 on the Géotechnique special issue on the observational method (Nicholson, 1996)
Summary
Preloading with a surcharge is today commonly used together with prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) for embankment construction on clayey soil to accelerate primary consolidation and increase strength. By installing a pattern of PVDs in a loaded clay stratum consolidation will occur both vertically and horizontally (radially) towards the drains such that the spatially averaged degree of consolidation can be expressed as a function of time, t (Carrillo, 1942). UðtÞ 1⁄4 1 À 1⁄21 À UvðtÞ1⁄21 À UhðtÞ. Ð1Þ where the average degree of vertical consolidation is given by Terzaghi’s consolidation theory UvðtÞ 1⁄4 À X 1 i1⁄40. Ð2Þ and the average degree of horizontal consolidation can be expressed as.
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