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Forest of Dean slope stabilisation Highway Embankment Stabilisation Railway Embankment Stabilisation Consolidation of Soft Soil
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Consolidation of super Soft Soil EKG has been used in the form of an electrically conductive prefabricated vertical drain (e-PVD), to consolidate super soft kaolin clay. A large test pit was filled with kaolin clay with a moisture content of 85% to a depth of 2.4m with EKG vertical drains installed as shown in. The clay was left to settle for 100 hours, resulting in a consolidation of 20mm. Electroosmosis was then applied for a period of 500 hours which produced further consolidation of 340mm and an increase in shear strength from < 1kN/m² to 15–30kN/m². To produce an equivalent result using conventional means would have required a surcharge loading of 10m of fill, which would have been impossible to place on the super soft soil. During electro-osmosis water flows from the anode to the cathode; as a result the area around the anodes experiences the greatest reductions in moisture content and improvement in shear strength. In order to minimise moisture content anisotropy, the trial was completed with a phase of polarity reversal in order to draw water away from the electrodes which were acting as anodes in the first phase. Polarity reversal resulted in a more even distribution of shear strength in the soil. Large lab scale consolidation of super soft soil using EKG
The trial demonstrated that dewatering/consolidation using EKG prefabricated drains is rapid, effective and, energy efficient. For full scale applications, consolidation by EKG has a number of potential advantages over conventional wick drain technologies: • it is faster • no surcharge is required • the effectiveness of the e-PVD is unaffected by kinking or smearing as consolidation proceeds |
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