A study on the behaviour of soft clay under embankment loading

Abstract

Soil reinforcement is technique to improve the engineering characteristics of soil. Several reinforcement methods are available for stabilizing the problematic soils (soft clay) like the use of Portland cement, lime, fly ash, ground freeing, jet grouting, prefabricated vertical drains, stone columns and thermal methods. Recently basal reinforcements are also being used as a method to improve the bearing capacity and settlement characteristics of the soft soil. The reinforcement consists of one or more horizontal layers of geosynthetic reinforcement installed at a base of the embankment. A basal reinforced embankment can be used for the construction of road or a railway when a traditional construction method would take a lot of time for construction. In this paper a numerical analysis was conducted first to study the behaviour of virgin soft clay supporting the embankment. Further a sand layer was installed just below the embankment and basal reinforcement was provided at the centre of this sand layer to study its influence on the changed behaviour of soft clay. A comparison was made between the two and the requirement of further study has also been suggested.