Ground Improvement techniques are often used to improve sub soil properties in terms of their bearing capacity, shear strength, settlement characteristics, drainage, etc. These techniques have a wide range of applicability from coarse grained soils to fine grained soils.
Depending upon the loading conditions and nature of soil, a suitable technique which is also economical needs to be adopted. This paper gives the concept and theory of a few ground improvement techniques and describes the practical application of these techniques.
Introduction:
Ground improvement, is the modification of existing site foundation soils to provide better performance under design and/or operational loading conditions. Ground improvement techniques are used increasingly for new projects to allow utilization of sites with poor subsurface conditions.
Previously, these poor soils were considered as economically unjustifiable or technically not feasible and are often replaced with an engineered fill or location of the project is changed. In short, Ground improvement is executed to increase the bearing capacity, reduce the magnitude of settlements and the time in which it occurs, retard seepage, accelerate the rate at which drainage occurs, increase the stability of slopes, mitigation of liquefaction potential, etc.
Based on the soil conditions, a suitable method of ground improvement should be considered keeping in view of the economic feasibility as well as the time frame. In practice, ground improvement is widely used in a broad construction spectrum from industrial, commercial and housing projects to infrastructure construction for dams, tunnels, ports, roadways and embankments. This paper presents two different ground improvement techniques along with a case history for each of the technique as an example.
Source: IJIES
Authors: Sneha P.Hirkane, N.G.Gore, P.J.Salunke