Simulation of Safe Height Embankment on Soft Ground Using Plaxis

AbstractIndustrial development in Malaysia has rapidly increased, there are many construction projects has been carried out. Referring to the above, it can cause reducing the construction area. In this situation, nowadays many construction need to be constructed on the soft ground. When construction is done on soft ground, the problem is it will give a week foundation due to increasing of settlement and also directly, it can cause construction costs to be high. They construct the embankment to control the settlement of the soil but, the settlement still occurs during and after filling the embankment. They are many methods to improve the ground, one of the way is by using geosynthetic product which is geotextile. The aim of this paper is to determine the safe height of embankment constructed on soft ground through application of geotextile as soil reinforcement. The geotextile with various geotextile reinforcement spacing were applied in an embankment. The height of embankment placed on soft ground was about 3 to 5 m height. To know those effects, software PLAXIS Version 8.2 was used to analyses the embankment. From the analysis, it can be concluded that the safe height of the case embankment was 4.9 m and the spacing of geotextile was less than 1 m. Result for the embankment case study is as expected (Pass), because the specifications on case study is better than the critical condition of the analysis