Browsing by Author "Babu, M.R.D."

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    Experimental Studies on Behaviour of Stone Columns in Layered Soils
    (2011) Shivashankar, R.; Babu, M.R.D.; Nayak, S.; Rajathkumar, V.
    Stone columns are found to be effective and economical ground improvement technique in soft grounds. Understanding its behaviour when they are installed in stratified soils, in particular when the upper layer consists of weak soil, will be of great practical significance. This paper presents results from a series of laboratory plate load tests carried out in unit cell tanks to investigate the behaviour of stone columns in layered soils, consisting of weak soft clay overlying a relatively stronger silty soil, for various thicknesses of the top layer. Tests were carried out with two types of loading (1) the entire area in the unit cell tank loaded, to estimate the stiffness of improved ground and (2) only the stone column loaded, to estimate the limiting axial capacity. Laboratory tests were carried out on a column of 90 mm diameter surrounded by layered soil, for an area ratio of 15%. It is found that the depth of top weak layer thickness has a significant influence on the stiffness, load bearing capacity and bulging behavior of stone columns. 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
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    Performance of stone columns with circumferential nails
    (2011) Nayak, S.; Shivashankar, R.; Babu, M.R.D.
    Stone columns are often used as an effective technique for improving the performance of soft ground. Stone columns derive their load-carrying capacity due to lateral confinement from the surrounding soil. Very soft soils offer very low lateral confinement, leading to large settlements and low load-carrying capacities. In this paper, an alternative method of enhancing the performance of stone columns in soft soils by reinforcing the stone columns with circumferential nails driven vertically is suggested. The method was developed in laboratory-scale model tests and a series of plate load tests were performed in unit cell tanks to investigate the performance of stone columns reinforced with circumferential nails. The investigation was carried out by varying the depth of nails below ground level, the number of nails and the diameter of nails with different diameter stone columns and area ratios (orspacing). It was found that the circumferentially reinforced stone columns have much higher load-carrying capacity with a significant reduction in settlement and less lateral bulging in comparison with plain stone columns.