Evaluation the Efficiency of Installing Stone Columns in Ground Improvement of Al-Nassiriya City Soil

Abstract

This paper investigates the performance of stone columns in soft soil of Al-Nassiriya city (one of Iraqi cities in the south). A geotechnical study of physical and mechanical properties of the soil has been carried out for a selected areas from Al-Nassiriya city. A finite difference Matlab program has been employed in simulation of installing stone columns in the aforementioned soil. Results of the study illustrate using stone columns reduces the settlement of the soil for different values of the modular ratio and replacement ratio, thus the Wmax maximum settlement ratio changes from 30% to 16% of the modular ratios (Ec-/Es)=10 and 50 respectively. The effect of spacing and column width is taken into consideration.All results are reasonable and harmonic with most last studies