Study of Bag Grouting Pile Reinforcing Deep Soft-Soil Foundation with an Interlayer of Hard Materials on High-Speed Railway Ballast Track

High-speed railways are built in deep soft-soil foundations interlayered with hard materials. However, the hard layers cannot be penetrated by conventional foundation treatment. Moreover, the project cost is sometimes prohibitive, which is an issue for post-construction subsidence control. The bag grouting pile is a special grouting-pile-reinforcement technique for treating soft-soil foundations interlayered with hard materials. This paper conducted tests on the Ningbo-Taizhou-Wenzhou ballast track passenger railway, combining a conventional mixing-pile-foundation (not through hard layer) processing station and the bag-grouting-pile-processing subgrade line. Using field tests combined with numerical calculation, the lateral displacement, settlement and pile–soil stress were tested to obtain the working properties of the grouting-pile-composite foundation. The variation in the law of lateral displacement, settlement, and pile–soil stress of the foundation was studied. The results showed that the post-construction subsidence of bag-grouting-pile- and conventional mixing-pile-foundation control was less than 15 cm and 30 cm, respectively, which met the design requirements. The results also showed that the design scheme was reasonable (load-sharing ratio of bag-pile-foundation pile soil-based test was reasonable). The numerical calculation showed a change in pile diameter. It also showed that pile spacing could not improve subsidence-control properties, bag grouting pile can promote pore-pressure dissipation and accelerate consolidation, and pile spacing can be increased to cut project costs incurred by the pile-bearing capacity