Behavior of Compacted Lime-soil Columns

Authors

1 Civil department, Kerman University, Kerman, Iran

2 Civil Engineering, Islamic azad University

Abstract

This study presents the results of large scale laboratory model tests to investigate the behavior of Compacted Lime – Well-graded Soil (CL-WS) rigid stone columns in soft soils. The  unit cell idealization is used for construction of composite specimens by evaluating the influence of different parameters such as the diameter of the column (D), the slenderness ratio (L/D) and the area ratio (Ar). Experiments were carried out on the both end bearing and floating columns. Load was applied over entire area of the specimens to find the stiffness of the improved ground. Based on the results, it was concluded that CL-WS columns increase the load carrying capacity and reduce the settlement of soft soils. In addition, the results show the influence of model size on the stiffness of the specimens which means that the load carrying capacity decrease by increasing the size of models. However, for specimens containing columns with diameter greater than 100 mm, the variations of stiffness become negligible and hence the results can be used to extrapolate and predict the full size behavior of these columns. The experimental results are compared with results reported in the literature for ordinary stone columns.

Keywords