Maxwell model for geosynthetic encased column (GEC) in soft ground improvement for construction works in Viet Nam

Abstract

In the field of geotechnical – soft soil improvement, the mathematical model or mechanical model is one of the important input parameters for the design calculations or studies. The determination of the appropriateness of the models has a great influence on the accuracy results of design and calculation as well as the sustainable stability of soft ground after improvement. On the contrary, the selection of inadequate calculation models will lead to increased costs of soft soil improvement, possibly even leading to the destabilization of the work and causing immense loss of people and property. Recently, many projects major highway after construction design in use has not meet the requirements of the standard, leading to wasted money and time of individuals, organizations, and the state of post-treatment. Therefore, the research and application of using mathematical or mechanical models in accordance with the new soft soil improvement method will greatly help as well as add additional options for soft soil improvement in Vietnam. The soft soil deformation is not only related to load but also to load time. The change in stress and deformation of weak soil over time is called rheology, and in this study is the viscoelastic behavior. From the above reasons, we try to apply a generalized Maxwell model to explain the viscoelastic behavior of a soft soil. In particular, the time-dependent behavior of a viscoelastic soft soil was represented by using the Maxwell rheological model. The Matlab programming code helps to solve numerically all the equation of the mathematical exhibition of the generalized Maxwell model results. We acknowledge that the generalized Maxwell model is superior in demonstrating the time-dependent behavior of soft soil. The results probably show that this is one of the effective models to predict the behavior of soft soils in ground improvement with GEC.