Use of Soil Cement Bed in Improvement of Load Carrying Capacity of Stone Columns

Abstract

Reinforcing the soft clay with stone columns is one of the most accepted techniques for improving the ground. Use of stone columns increases the bearing capacity and reduces the compressibility of soft clayey soil. However, due to the application of the vertical load, the stone columns bulge and hence settlement occurs. To reduce the bulging and vertical settlement, a hard layer of soil–cement was placed over the stone columns as load transferring platform so that the layer transferred a reduced stress to the soft soil and stone column composite foundation. A series of laboratory experiments was conducted on single and a group of stone columns with and without the soil–cement bed. The effects of the thickness of the soil–cement bed, length of the stone columns and spacing between the stone columns were discussed. It was observed that due to the application of soil–cement bed, the bulging and vertical settlement of the stone column reduced noticeably and load carrying capacity increased appreciably. All the experimental results were compared with the numerical results obtained from ABAQUS-3D and a good correlation between the results was obtained.