Geotextile

Settlement (finance)

World Wide Web

Engineering

Pile

Geotechnical engineering

Computer science

Payment

Geology

Soil water

Subsoil

Full scale

Finite element method

Geosynthetics

Soil science

Subgrade

Structural engineering

Geogrid

Levee

Reinforcement

Canadian Geotechnical Journal

The performance of four sections of a full-scale embankment constructed on soft soil is examined using a fully coupled and fully three-dimensional finite element analysis. The four sections had similar embankment loadings but different improvement options (one unimproved, one with pile-support only, one with a single layer geotextile-reinforced platform and pile-support, and one with two layers of geogrid-reinforced platform and pile-support). Like the field data, the numerical results show that the inclusion of piles decreases the settlement at the subsoil surface to 52% of that for the unimproved section, and the addition of a single layer of geotextile reinforcement (J = 800 kN/m) further reduced settlement to only 31% of that of the unimproved section. The effects of geosynthetic reinforcement and multiple layers of reinforcement on the performance of the pile-supported embankment are discussed. The relative load transfer is calculated using eight existing methods and they are compared with the field measurements and numerical results.

Three-dimensional finite element modelling of a full-scale geosynthetic-reinforced, pile-supported embankment