Study of geotextile reinforcement on the embankment shear strength subjected to building load using raft foundations using plaxis 2D.
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Muhammad Ridz Aqil Bin Ridzuan
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Abstract
Economic growth brings about national and human development; hence infrastructure
have to be built to support sustainable national growth. Consequently, most of the prime land
have already been taken. Hence, areas with problematic soils are developed on using various
ground improvement methods, fill embankments are usually used for ground improvement to
induce settlement and to provide a firm base to build on. Various studies are done on road
embankments with geotextiles used as drainage and as reinforcement to ensure stability against
loads which are theoretically uniformly distributed. However, there is a lack of research into
reinforced embankments subjected to non-uniformly distributed loads. This research aims to
help cover this gap by evaluating the effectiveness of geotextile reinforced embankments
subjected to non-uniformly distributed loading from buildings using raft foundations, this is
done using PLAXIS 2D to conduct consolidation and safety analysis of two embankments of
slope angles 26.6˚ and 35˚, without geotextiles, with geotextile spaced at 0.5 and 1m apart.
Which are subjected to building loads by considering the changes in FOS and deformation at
local and global failure. From the analysis the optimum embankment design is with a slope
angle of 26.6˚ at either 0.5m or 1m spacing, where both yields a 99.7% reduction in
displacement from the baseline. However, the FOS value stagnates at one in all three cases. In
terms of global failure, at the surface and at 0.35m below ground level, the optimum
embankment design in terms of FOS is with a slope of 35˚ at 0.5m spacing where there is an
increase of 0.53% from the baseline. The optimum embankment design to reduce displacement
on the surface and 0.35m below ground level is with a slope angle of 26.6˚ at 1m geotextile
spacing causing a reduction of 0.09% and 8.7% respectively from the baseline. Hence
geotextiles help to improve fill embankments by increasing the FOS with the displacement and
is effective when using shallow slope angles.