Performance monitoring of rammed aggregate piers: a stockyard case history site

This paper investigates the design aspects of Rammed Aggregate Pier® (RAP) treatment as a composite treatment for the unfavourable ground conditions, the construction, QA/QC measures and the verification of the performance via a comprehensive instrumentation scheme. For this purpose, instrumented full scale load test was performed for the stockyard project site in Izmir, Turkey. The soil profile is comprised of fill and soft sandy clay layers overlain by the pyroclastic bedrock. 6 to 18 m long RAP elements were installed in a square grid spaced between 1.5 m and 2.0 m to improve bearing capacity and settlement responses, to accelerate the time rate of settlement (i.e.: consolidation) and to mitigate the liquefaction potential at the project site. The foundation settlement was estimated by RocScience‐Settle 3D software, which was observed to be 30 % smaller than the measured values. After the ground improvement with RAP elements, the foundation settlements were measured as less than 10 cm as compared to 40 ‐ 60 cm settlement predictions of the untreated system.