Displacement-Based Design of Geosynthetic-Reinforced Pile-Supported Embankments to Increase Sustainability

Abstract

Although the construction of concrete piles has a relevant environmental footprint, they are commonly used to reduce settlements of embankments on soft soil strata. A more sustainable choice to further reduce settlements (and, consequently, the number of piles) is to place geosynthetics below the embankment. However, existing design methods cannot calculate settlements at the embankment top and cannot be used to optimise the number of piles in a displacement-based design. In this note, an innovative model for assessing settlements at the top of Geosynthetic-Reinforced and Pile-Supported embankments induced by the embankment construction process is presented and validated against finite difference numerical analyses. The model is used to optimise the design of both piles and geosynthetic, and applied to a practical example, where the mass of CO2 saved by designing geosynthetics to reduce the pile number. Graphical Abstract: