Settlement, sliding, and liquefaction remediation of layered soil

A series of highly instrumented, large-scale centrifuge models have been tested to investigate the extent of remediation required to control settlement and lateral sliding of soil deposits at a hypothetical bridge site. The baseline model represents a prototype with a 9-m-thick layer of fine sand having a relative density (Dr) of 50%. The sand layer is overlain by clay floodplains with a free face at a river channel. One nearly level floodplain surface supports a bridge abutment. The other floodplain has a 9% slope toward the river. In different models, different amounts of the 50% relative density sand was densified to Dr = 80%. Full depth improvement reduced settlements and lateral sliding of the sand by about a factor of 3. Due to the effects at the clay-sand interface, lateral sliding of the surficial clay deposit was not controlled by densification of the sand. Tests in which the width of the densified zone was only about 75% of the thickness of the loose sand indicated that relatively narrow zones of improvement can control settlement and sliding of the sand. Differences in shear resistance, pore pressures, dilatancy, and energy dissipation in loose and dense sands are presented.