Evaluation of monotonic and cyclic behaviour of geotextile encased stone columns

Stone column installation is a convenient method for improvement of soft ground. In very soft clays, in order to increase the lateral confinement of the stone columns, encasing the columns with high stiffness and creep resistant geosynthetics has proved to be a successful solution. This paper presents the results of three dimensional finite element analyses for evaluating improvement in behaviour of ordinary stone columns (OSCs) installed in soft clay by geotextile encasement under monotonic and cyclic loading by a comprehensive parametric study. The parameters include length and stiffness of encasement, types of stone columns (floating and end bearing), frictional angle and elastic modulus of stone column\'s materials in comparison with OSCs. Also, encasing at the top portion of stone column up to triple the diameter of column is found to be adequate in improving its residual settlement and at all loading cycles, end bearing columns provide much higher resistance than floating columns.