Soft Soil Engineering

Richard Kelly

Vacuum consolidation ground treatment has been used to facilitate timely construction of a road embankment on a 25m thick deposit of soft to firm estuarine clay. This was the first application of the vacuum consolidation technique in Australia. The vacuum consolidation technique is presented, a summary of its construction is provided and data during construction, consolidation and after decommissioning is presented. A comparison with an adjacent embankment section constructed using the conventional surcharge and wick drain approach highlights enhanced stability obtained using vacuum consolidation.

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