TY - JOUR ID - 3316 TI - Experimental and Numerical Studies on Load-Carrying Capacity of Single Floating Aggregate Piers Reinforced with Vertical Steel Bars JO - Amirkabir Journal of Civil Engineering JA - CEEJ LA - en SN - 2588-297X AU - Mohammad Rezaei, Mehdi AU - LAJEVARDI, seyed hamid AU - Saba, Hamid Reza AU - ghalandarzadeh, abas AU - Zeighamie, Ehsanollah AD - Department of Civil Engineering, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran AD - College of Civil Engineering, Tafresh University, Tafresh , Iran AD - School of Civil Engineering, University College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran Y1 - 2020 PY - 2020 VL - 52 IS - 7 SP - 1797 EP - 1816 KW - Experimental study KW - Numerical Modelling KW - aggregate pier KW - kaolin clay soil KW - vertical reinforcing steel bars DO - 10.22060/ceej.2019.15640.5991 N2 - The load-carrying capacity of the aggregate piers increases by circumferential confinement created by the surrounding soil. In soft clay soils, the amount of confinement is usually not sufficient to develop a load-carrying capacity. Because of that, it is practical to use geosynthetic reinforced aggregate piers in this type of soils. This paper intends to evaluate the use of vertical steel bars as an alternative for geosynthetics. In this study, some small-scale laboratory tests were performed on floating aggregate piers with diameters of 80 and 100 mm and a length of 400 and 500 mm, respectively reinforced with vertical steel bars. Moreover, two-dimensional numerical modeling using the Plaxis software was conducted. The results show that using bars with more stiffness leads to more increase in load-carrying capacity. Reinforcing the full length of the aggregate piers, compared to half-length, will further improve the load-carrying capacity of the aggregate piers. In the early stages, by applying the load, the stone aggregates tend to compress, so load-carrying capacity increases and by continuing this process, the tendency to the occurrence of lateral bulging is seen and due to the low resistance of kaolin clay to the bulging, the increase of load-carrying capacity is negligible. Also, numerical modeling results show that the floating aggregate pier penetrated into soft clay soil in the full-length case, and the failure state changed from bulging to slip. UR - https://ceej.aut.ac.ir/article_3316.html L1 - https://ceej.aut.ac.ir/article_3316_008d89ee123642c87ec2637123563779.pdf ER -