When constructing structures receiving high vertical and horizontal force such as port facilities, caissons and breakwaters on a soft ground on the sea or seashore, it is very important to increase the strength of the ground and inhibit excessive sett...
When constructing structures receiving high vertical and horizontal force such as port facilities, caissons and breakwaters on a soft ground on the sea or seashore, it is very important to increase the strength of the ground and inhibit excessive settlement by improving thick soft ground. In Korea, grounds of this condition have been improved usually through displacement method, sand compaction pile (SCP) method, gravel compaction pile (GCP) method, stone column method, deep cement mixing (DCM) method, etc. As these methods have several problems, however, alternative construction methods are being studied actively. Recently, there are an increasing number of studies in Korea and Europe on the method of wrapping the outer wall of granular piles with geosynthetic fibers such as geotextile or geogrid that has a certain level of tensile strength.
In a granular pile reinforced with geosynthetic fiber, the reinforcement material made of geosynthetic fiber in the form of pack inhibits, by the ring or hoop tensile force from the geosynthetic fiber, the lateral deformation of the granular pile in the bulging of the pile by external load and increases horizontal resistance. The reinforcement effect of geosynthetic fiber increases the strength of granular piles, and a soft ground where such granular piles reinforced with geosynthetic fiber are used has increased bearing capacity and shear resistance and decreased settlement, and furthermore, this method consumes a less aggregate compared to the conventional SCP or GCP method. However, there are not many cases of construction using sand or stone piles reinforced with geosynthetic fiber, and most of related studies are about models using crushed stone as in-fill material or high‐strength geogrid as reinforcing material and not many studies have been made on the behavior of soft grounds using SCPs reinforced with geosynthetic fiber, which has relatively low rigidity.
This study purposed to find the characteristics of behavior such as shear strength and stress concentration ratio of a composite ground improved using SCPs reinforced with geosynthetic fiber as an alternative to the conventional SCP method for improving soft ground, and how these characteristics are affected by the area replacement ratio and the tensile strength of geosynthetic fiber. With this purpose, several triaxial compression tests were carried out in order to examine the shear strength and behavior of composite soil in various conditions (sand-pack, clay-pack, sand-clay and sand-clay-pack). Moreover, loading tests were conducted with artificially remolded model grounds, which are soft cohesive soil grounds improved using SCPs or SCPs reinforced with geosynthetic fiber, using a centrifuge model tester in order to analyze the reinforcement effect of SCPs by geosynthetic fiber, and the bearing capacity, stress concentration characteristic and failure mechanism of the sand-clay-pack composite ground.
According to the results of this study, in the outcomes of the triaxial compression test on composite soil in various conditions reinforced with geosynthetic fiber, the shear strength reinforcement effect of geosynthetic fiber was shown clearly by the increase of cohesion intercept. The increase of shear strength was manifested as the increase of bearing capacity in the model test on the sand-clay-pack composite ground, and when compared with bearing capacity measured for the sand-clay composite ground, reinforcement with geosynthetic fiber increased bearing power by around 2.1 times. In the sand-clay-pack composite ground, the tensile strength of geosynthetic fiber did not have a significant effect on test results due to buckling in the pack piles. This result suggests that the ring or hoop tensile force of geosynthetic fiber developed in the bulging of SCPs does not have a significant effect on the behavior of pack piles in buckling failure. On the other hand, the stress concentration ratio calculated from soil pressure measurements converged on a certain value (around 2.5) in the sand-clay composite ground, but increased continuously until the failure of pack piles in the sand-clay-pack composite ground.