Floating road construction on soft soil

Abstract

The main problem of road construction on saturated soft soils is due to their low bearing capacity and large settlement. One of the solutions to such problems is to install piled box culverts-geofoam. In this study, the pile box culvert-geofoam was modelled as raft foundation. This experimental study was conducted by making a prototype raft file foundation gradually loaded with a maximum vertical load of 20 kN. Different thicknesses of geofoam were utilized in order to observe the influence of thickness on the settlement. Furthermore, difference in settlement is also found when the culvert was constructed with and without geofoam. Thicker geofoam was observed to result in smaller settlement.