Plane-Strain Modeling of Smear Effects Associated with Vertical Drains

Design procedure for vertical drains considering a linear variation of lateral permeability within the smear zone

A large-strain radial consolidation theory for soft clays improved by vertical drains

A system of vertical drains with combined vacuum and surcharge preloading is an effective solution for promoting radial flow, accelerating consolidation. However, when a mixture of soil and water is deposited at a low initial density, a significant amount of deformation or surface settlement occurs. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce large-strain theory, which has been widely used to manag...

A Hybrid Stress Plane Element with Strain Field

In this paper, a plane quadrilateral element with rotational degrees of freedom is developed. Present formulation is based on a hybrid functional with independent boundary displacement and internal optimum strain field. All the optimality constraints, including being rotational invariant, omitting the parasitic shear error and satisfying Fliepa’s pure bending test, are considered. Moreover, the...

Performance of Composite and Monolithic Prefabricated Vertical Drains

With the increasing use ofprefabricated vertical drains in the improvement of soft clay there are many types of these drains, both composite (with geotextile wrapping) and monolithic (without geotextile wrapping), available in Malaysia. Some engineers have the impression that all drains perform satisfactorily. However, case studies have shown that there are cases where vertical drains failed to...

Effects of partially penetrating prefabricated vertical drains and loading patterns on vacuum consolidation

In this study, numerical modeling of a multi-drain system is employed to determine the optimum penetration depth of prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) and the vacuum pressure that provides the maximum consolidation settlement and less lateral displacements. The plane strain analysis using an equivalent permeability with transformed unit cell geometry was considered for varying drain length an...