Soil Stabilization with Vertical Piles Bearing Capacity and Settlement Characteristics of Cohesive Soil Reinforced with Sand, M Sand, Quarry Dust Piles

Abstract

The cohesive soil deposits are unsuitable for construction activities because of their poor geotechnical properties such as less bearing capacity and high settlement. Modern urban development necessitate construction and development activities in available soft clay deposits. It is a usual practice to provide fine aggregate piles in soft clay deposits to improve its properties. Due to the unavailability of natural fine aggregate resources and critical environmental issues involved, the feasibility of using M sand and quarry dust as floating granular vertical pile material as a substitute to natural aggregate have been experimented in this work. For various footing sizes and various pile depths the California bearing ratio test was conducted. The settlement reduction factor and group pile efficiency are estimated by studying the load settlement characteristics. It is found that the M Sand reinforced piles increases the bearing capacity and reduces the settlement and recommended to be used for improving the bearing capacity of soft clay soils.