Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
TECHNOLOGY
UDHAYA KUMAR .T, PRIST University, Puducherry 7. udhaya0404@gmail.com .
ABSTRACT: In the rapid expansion in housing, owners and engineers who have had past experience
infrastructure and utilities developments in the last with the high cost of foundations on poor soils.
30 years, engineers have to deal with less favorable For example, developers tend to shy away from
sites such as coastal lowlands, swamps, filled building on ex-mining lands that demand higher
ground, reclaimed land, etc. A number of mega size investment cost on foundation.
infrastructure projects would have been economically In fact, potential foundation problems have played a
non-viable and/or technically non-feasible if they had significant role in site selection. If a site
been constructed using conventional methods meant investigation has shown that the soil conditions have
for good soil conditions. Ground Improvement been found unusually bad, it has been prudent to
techniques are often used to improve sub soil move to a more favorable site.
properties in terms of their bearing capacity, shear Due to the rapid development as described above,
strength, settlement characteristics, drainage, etc. the relative importance of good soil conditions in
Depending upon the loading conditions and nature of site selection has diminished.
soil, a suitable technique which is also economical The growing scarcity of sites having good soil
needs to be adopted. It was necessary to explore the conditions had made it necessary to utilize all the
innovations of using non-conventional methods when remaining land regardless of its soil conditions.
poor soil conditions may impair the integrity and Some sites are now being developed that were once
serviceability of the structures. The natural condition tin mining lands underlain by soft slime. With the
of poor soil needs to be altered to meet the project increasingly large scale development of many
requirements where settlement requirements are housing and infrastructure makes it necessary to
more stringent and poor ground strength needs to be incorporate both good and bad soil conditions in a
significantly improved, this is termed as ground single project.
improvement. The common types of ground Factor such as the demand for access to deep water
improvement used are described in this paper. Due to has made it necessary to develop ports and container
the increasing awareness of the construction impact terminals at coastal areas which are very often
on the environment, sustainable construction unfavorable swamps close to water channels.
techniques using green technology such as ground Unsuitable sites (also referred to as marginal sites),
improvement is also increasingly used. most often, the ground imposes restrictions on the
1. INTRODUCTION: design and the engineer has, apart from abandoning
In the early days of development, only the best the project, four options:
available lands having reasonably good soil 1) To replace the poor soils with suitable fill
conditions are being developed. This is due to the materials;
2) To bypass the unsuitable soil by using piles 2. FUNCTIONS OF GROUND
or deep foundations; IMPROVEMENT:
3) To redesign the structure to meet the ground Ground improvement is a viable alternative to
limitations; or conventional structural support solution. In most
4) To alter the natural condition of the poor soil instances, it proves to be the more economical
to meet the project requirements. solution. The main functions of ground improvement
are:
The latter is often termed as ground
improvement. The partial or complete excavation of 1) To control deformation and accelerate
unsuitable soils and their replacement with better fill consolidation;
materials may be considered 2) To increase bearing capacity and to provide
Fine or coarse grained soils can be used as lateral stability; and
backfilling materials if the ground water level is 3) To increase resistance to liquefaction.
located below the excavation.
Granular materials should be used when the 3. CLASSIFICATION OF GROUND
ground water level is high. Complete replacement is IMPROVEMENT TECHNOLOGY:
generally suitable for sites with shallow deposit of Ground Improvement techniques may be
unsuitable soils, usually less than 3m depth. broadly classified in to following categories:
Ground improvement, is the modification of 1) Improvement by deep vibration
existing site foundation soils to provide better 2) Improvement by increasing effective
performance under design and/or operational loading stresses
conditions. 3) Improvement by reinforcement
Ground improvement techniques are used 4) Improvement by structural fills
increasingly for new projects to allow utilization of 5) Improvement by admixtures
sites with poor subsurface conditions. 6) Improvement by grouting
In short, Ground improvement is executed to 7) Improvement by thermal stabilization,
increase the bearing capacity, reduce the magnitude etc.
of settlements and the time in which it occurs, retard The soil conditions, a suitable method of
seepage, accelerate the rate at which drainage occurs, ground improvement should be considered keeping in
increase the stability of slopes, mitigation of view of the economic feasibility as well as the time
liquefaction potential, etc frame. In practice, ground improvement is widely
In the case of constructing a road used in a broad construction spectrum from
embankment, partial structural solution is for the industrial, commercial and housing projects to
embankment to rest on piled supported concrete caps infrastructure construction for dams, tunnels, ports,
or rafts. A full structural solution is the construction roadways and embankments.
of viaducts The wet top feed method.
The name arises from the fact that water jetting is the method of mixing, characteristics of the in-situ
used to assist penetration and stone is fed from the soil, binder content and column diameter.
top of the vibrator. In this method, a crawler crane of In the deep soil mixing process,
sufficient capacity is used to support the assembly admixtures/binders are introduced into the in-situ
soils throught out the treatment depth and mixed
thoroughly using large diameter single or multiple-
shaft mixing tools to form columns or panels of
improved material (refer to Figure 1.4). The mix-in-
place columns can be up to 1m or more in diameter.
Typical admixtures are cement and lime, but slag /
flyash and/or other additives can also be used.