EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL EVALUATION OF STONE COLUMN IN SOFT CLAY

ABSTRACT: In recent years stone columns have been increasingly used for improvement of soft soils to increase the load bearing capacity and to reduce the settlements. This ground improvement technique has been successfully applied for the foundations of structures like oil storage tanks, earthen embankments, raft foundations etc where large settlement is possible. Despite the wide spread use of stone columns, present design methods are largely empirical. No codes have been developed. In the present work experimental studies are carried out to evaluate the behaviour of stone column by varying spacing, shear strength of soft clay, moisture content etc. The results obtained are analysed using the finite element package PLAXIS. The paper describes literature review on the subject, details of experimental works carried out, numerical analysis using finite element package, comparison of results and discussion