Soil improvement and reinforcement - Treatment without adjuvants

This article is the first in a series of three that will present a comprehensive overview of soil improvement and reinforcement techniques.

Between the traditional solutions of shallow foundations, adapted to good soils, and deep foundations, enabling loads to be transferred to the load-bearing horizons in the case of poor surface soils, a vast range of techniques has been developed to treat unsuitable soil layers in situ, so that the planned structure can then be founded on them.

This subject was the subject of an exhaustive book "Amsol – soil improvement and reinforcement", published in 2018 by "Le Moniteur" editions. The two authors of this article are co-authors of AMSOL, along with Laurent Briançon and Bruno Simon.

The following three articles are based on the AMSOL book, to which you may wish to refer for more details and examples of applications of these techniques.

This first article Soil improvement and reinforcement – Treatments without additives will present, after a preliminary on the geotechnical investigations necessary for the design and implementation of soil improvement works, the different techniques of mass densification without additives, first for pulverulent soils and then for cohesive soils.

Each of the two chapters first presents the technique under study, then defines the fields of application. An analysis of the advantages and limitations of the different techniques enables the reader to compare them and make the right technical and economic choice. The essential elements for good design and accurate dimensioning of geotechnical structures are outlined. The execution and works section is followed by advice on the monitoring, inspection and instrumentation of structures, essential in the complex field of soil reinforcement techniques.

The following article on soil improvement and reinforcement – Treatments with inclusions deals with soil reinforcement techniques using flexible and rigid inclusions.

Finally, the last article, Soil improvement and reinforcement – Injection treatments, is devoted to techniques involving the injection of different types of grout, depending on the desired objective.