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Although fully penetrating stone columns have widely been studied in the literature, the number of published studies on floating stone columns – which also have been efficiently used to improve vertically lengthy soft-clay deposits – is very limited. Basal reinforcement with geosynthetic is another technique that increases overall stability of embankments on soft soils and can be combined with stone columns. In the paper, mechanical-hydraulic coupled finite element analyses are performed to study a floating stone column-supported embankment on a thick soft soil deposit. A parametric analysis is conducted so that the influence of two governing factors is evaluated: length of stone columns; basal reinforcement with geosynthetic. An overall stability analysis method, which uses the results of finite element analyses, is also applied. Results of several key variables are analysed: overall safety factor, settlements, horizontal displacements, vertical stress at the embankment base, stress concentration ratio, excess pore pressures and geosynthetic tensile force.
José Borges (Fri,) studied this question.