Geotextiles and Geomembranes 27 (2009) 152155

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Geotextiles and Geomembranes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geotexmem

Technical Note

A new type of prefabricated vertical drain with improved properties

Han-long Liu a, Jian Chu b, *
a b

Geotechnical Research Institute, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Block N1, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 31 May 2008 Received in revised form 20 September 2008 Accepted 23 September 2008 Available online 11 November 2008 Keywords: Prefabricated vertical drains Soft soil Soil improvement

a b s t r a c t
Conventionally prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) consists of a core and a lter sleeve as two separable components. A new type of PVD is now available in which the lter and the core are bound together by heat melting to become an integrated body. This new type of integrated PVD has offered a new method in improving the properties and performance of PVD. Laboratory test results are presented in this note to show that both the tensile strength and the discharge capacity of the integrated PVD have increased as compared with those of the separable type of the same materials. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) has been used widely for the improvement of soft soil by preloading (Holtz, 1987; Bergado et al., 1990, 1993a,b, 1996, 2002; Li and Rowe, 2001; Arulrajah et al., 2004; Bo, 2004; Chai et al., 2004, 2008; Chu et al., 2004, 2006; Rowe and Li, 2005; Indraratna and Chu, 2005; Shen et al., 2005; Abuel-Naga et al., 2006; Sinha et al., 2007; Rowe and Taechakumthorn, 2008.) and PVD techniques have been well established (Holtz et al., 1991; Bo et al., 2003). As discussed by a number of researchers, the effectiveness of PVD in soil improvement is affected by the quality of the PVDs (Chu et al., 2004). A PVD must provide sufcient tensile strength and discharge capacity among other factors to ensure its effective use in soil improvement. As million meters of PVDs can be used for a large scale soil improvement project, the unit cost of PVD becomes an important consideration. One way to improve the cost-effectiveness of PVD is to improve the quality of PVD with little or no increase in material costs. PVD consists of a core and a lter sleeve. The core is normally placed loosely inside the lter as two separate components, as shown in Fig. 1(a). There are two major shortcomings with this design. Firstly, the tensile strengths of the core and the lter are normally not compatible and sometimes differ a lot. As a result, one component, either the core or the lter, will break rst. Once one component breaks, the PVDs will no longer function properly. Secondly, as the lter is tted loosely to the core, the lter will
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 65 67904563; fax: 65 67910676. E-mail addresses: hliu@hhu.edu.cn (H.-long Liu), cjchu@ntu.edu.sg (J. Chu). 0266-1144/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geotexmem.2008.09.006

indent into the drainage channels of the core under earth pressure as shown in Fig. 2. As a result, the discharge capacity of the PVD will be reduced, as discussed in detail by Broms et al. (1994). The above two problems can be overcome by a new type of PVD in which the lter and the core are adhered together by heat melting along the contacts between the core and the lter to form an inseparable body, as shown in Fig. 1(b). A picture of the integrated PVD is also shown in Fig. 1(c). The new design possesses the following advantages. (1) The tensile strength of the integrated PVD will be higher than that of the separable type. This is because the core and lter will deform as one body and the combined tensile strength is higher than the weaker element between the core and the lter due to the interaction between the two components. (2) The discharge capacity of the integrated PVD will be greater. This is mainly because the indentation of lter into the drainage channels of the core is considerably reduced for the integrated PVD and the vertical wings of the core are also less easy to be bent under pressure as the overall stiffness of the PVD has increased after the core and lter are adhered together. (3) The integrated PVD becomes more resistant to clogging because the drainage channels in the integrated type of PVD are not connected. Therefore, when one channel is blocked, it will not affect the rest. (4) Saving in the lter material. The width of the lter is now exactly 100 mm in the integrated PVD, whereas in the separable PVD, the lter warps the core so it has to be at least 20 40 mm longer in circumference.

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a
Allan Screw

b
1002mm 51 mm
Hollow Extension Plate

Top Cap

'O' Rings Marine Clay Drain 100mm x 100mm

Valve

Marine Clay

Valve

Base

Fig. 3. Discharge capacity testing devices. (a) Straight drain tester; and (b) buckling drain tester. Fig. 1. Types of PVD. (a) Separable type; (b) integrated type; and (c) a picture of the integrated drain.

(5) Increase in production. As the lter is no longer required to wrap the core, the PVD can now be produced by adhering together core and lter materials of any width greater than 100 mm rst and then cutting the integrated core and lter into 100 mm wide PVD. In this way, the PVD production can be made much easier and productive.

Some laboratory test results are presented in this paper to show that both the tensile strength and the discharge capacity of the integrated PVD are higher than those of the separable PVD made of the same materials. 2. Experimental setup and PVD tested 2.1. Tensile strength test The tensile strength tests were conducted using a material testing machine. A clamp which had a width of more than 100 mm was used to x a 100 mm wide drain specimen at the two ends. The gauged length of the drain was 100 mm. The pulling rate was 25 mm/min. The specimen was tested until the drain (or the core or lter) broke. The drain specimens at both dry and wet conditions are tested. 2.2. Discharge capacity test

Soil

Filter

Core

Fig. 2. Reduction of ow area caused by the deformation of lter.

The discharge capacity of the PVD was measured using a straight drain tester (Chu et al., 2004) and a buckled drain tester as shown in Fig. 3. In the former, a 100 mm long drain specimen was embedded in marine clay and the vertical pressures were applied using dead weight via an oedometer loading frame (Chu et al., 2004). In the latter, the PVD specimen was enclosed in a rubber membrane. The

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H.-long Liu, J. Chu / Geotextiles and Geomembranes 27 (2009) 152155 Table 1 Tensile strength tests of integrated and separable PVD samples at dry state Specimen Integrated-1 Integrated-2 Integrated-3 Separable-1 Separable-2 Separable-3 Tensile strength at 10% axial strain (N) 3140 3260 3100 2800 2620 2680 Tensile strength at failure (N) 3480 3460 3460 2920 2820 2840 Tensile strain at failure (%) 20 16 22 12 14 14

effective length of the PVD was 400 mm. To simulate the effect of buckling on the discharge capacity of PVD, the PVD specimen was bent in the middle in a way as shown in Fig. 3(b). The pressures were applied using the hydrostatic pressure of the cell uid. Chinese PVD quality inspection standard, JTJ/T257-96 (1996), was adopted in conducting both tests in which the hydraulic gradient used for the discharge capacity test was taken as 0.5. The use of a hydraulic gradient of 0.5 for discharge capacity test is reasonable, as explained in detail in Chu et al. (2004). 2.3. PVD used The separable and integrated PVDs used in the experiments were made of the same materials. The core was made of 100% transparent polypropylene plastic and the lter was made of DuPont grey colour, pure long-bre hot-bonded non-woven lter fabric. It had a width of 100 0.2 mm and a thickness of 4.5 0.2 mm. The shape of the drainage channel is shown in Fig. 1. The effective pore opening size was 0.075 mm and the weight to area ratio of the lter was larger than 110 g/m2. 3. Test results 3.1. Tensile strength tests For each specimen, 3 identical tests were conducted. The results for both integrated and separable type of PVD are shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b) for dry and wet conditions, respectively. The tensile strengths measured from these tests are given in Tables 1 and 2 for dry and wet conditions, respectively. A comparison of the average tensile force versus tensile strain curves between the integrated and separable types of PVDs is shown in Fig. 5 for both dry and wet

conditions, respectively. The data show that the average axial strain at failure has increased by 52% from 12.7% for the separable to 19.3% for the integrated PVD. The average failure tensile strength has also increased by 18.7% from 2903 N for the separable to 3447 N for the integrated PVD. The average tensile strength at 10% axial strain has also increased by 14.5% from 2747 N for the separable to 3146 N for the integrated PVD. Therefore, the tensile strength properties of the PVDs have greatly improved by using the integrated type of PVD. The reason for the increase in the tensile strength is mainly because of the better deformation compatibility between the core and the lter in the integrated PVD. When the lter is adhered to the core, the tensile strength of the PVD will be controlled by the core. For separable PVD, the lter and the core are tted loosely. The lter is normally 1020 mm wider in width. When the drain is pulled, the lter and core deform separately. When the lter fabric is pulled, the central portion will tend to neck more than the two ends to form an hourglass pattern. As a result, the central portion of the lter will undergo a deformation larger than the core and break rst. Therefore, for separable PVD, the tensile strength is controlled by the lter at least for the PVD tested. 3.2. Discharge capacity The discharge capacity of the integrated and separable types of drains as measured at a hydraulic gradient of i 0.5 by both the straight drain tester and the bulked drain tester are compared in Fig. 6. It can be seen that in both tests, the discharge capacity of the integrated PVD is higher than that of the separable one. At an applied pressure of 350 kPa, the discharge capacity of the integrated PVD is 38% and 49% higher than that of the separable one, respectively. This was mainly due to the following two reasons. (1) The indentation of lter into the core (as shown in Fig. 2) is much smaller for the integrated drain as discussed in Section 1. (2) As can be felt by hand, the integrated PVD is stiffer against bending than the separable PVD. This is because the lter fabric is bound to the core and thus limits the stretching of the core when bent. Therefore, the resistance to bending is better for the integrated drain. It should be noted that the two types of tests impose two different conditions. In the straight tests, the drain specimens were straight and embedded in soil, whereas in the buckling tests, the drain specimens were sealed in a membrane and articially bent. Whether the specimen is tested in soil or not will affect the discharge capacity measurement, as discussed in Chu et al. (2004). As the membrane was slightly oversized, the ows between the PVD and the membrane could not be completely eliminated under low pressure.
Table 2 Tensile strength tests of integrated and separable PVD samples at wet state Specimen Integrated-1 Integrated-2 Integrated-3 Separable-1 Separable-2 Separable-3 Tensile strength at 10% axial strain (N) 3120 3140 3120 2680 2820 2880 Tensile strength at failure (N) 3480 3380 3420 2860 2960 3020 Tensile strain at failure (%) 20 22 16 12 12 12

a
Tensile force (N)

4000 Dry samples 3000 Separable -1 2000 Separable -2 Separable -3 1000 Integrated -1 Integrated -2 Integrated -3 0 0 5 10 15 20

Elongation (%)

b
Tensile force (N)

4000 Wet samples 3000

Separable -1
2000

Separable -2 Separable -3 Integrated -1 Integrated -2 Integrated -3

1000

10

15

20

Elongation (%)
Fig. 4. Tensile strength tests on integrated and separable PVDs at (a) dry state; and (b) wet state.

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4000

Tensile force (N)

3000

2000

1000

Integrated -dry Separable -dry Integrated -wet Separable -wet

paper. The integrated PVD offers a number of advantages over the separable PVD. Both the tensile strength and the discharge capacity of the integrated PVD are higher than those of the separable one of the same material. The data presented in this note show that the average axial strain at failure has increased by 52% from 12.7% for the separable to 19.3% for the integrated PVD. The average failure tensile strength has also increased by 18.7% from 2903 N for the separable to 3447 N for the integrated PVD. The integrated PVD has a stronger resistance to bending. The integrated PVD also uses less lter materials and is more suitable for massive production. Therefore, the integrated PVD is an important improvement to the conventional design of PVD. Acknowledgements

10

15

20

Elongation (%)
Fig. 5. Comparison of tensile strength tests on integrated and separable PVDs at both dry and wet states.

The authors would like to thank Zhejiang Binwang Engineering Materials, Co., Ltd. for providing the PVD materials used in this study, and to Mr Bo Zhang for conducting some of the discharge capacity tests. References

a
Discharge capacity (ml/s)

150 Integrated 125 100 75 50 25 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 Separable
Abuel-Naga, H.M., Bergado, D.T., Chaiprakaikeow, S., 2006. Innovative thermal technique for enhancing the performance of prefabricated vertical drain during the preloading process. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 24 (6), 359370. Arulrajah, A., Nikraz, H., Bo, M.W., 2004. Factors affecting eld instrumentation assessment of marine clay treated with prefabricated vertical drains. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 22 (5), 415437. Bergado, D.T., Singh, N., Sim, S.H., Panichayatum, B., Sampaco, C.L., Balasubramaniam, A.S., 1990. Improvement of soft Bangkok clay using vertical geotextile band drains compared with granular piles. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 9 (3), 203231. Bergado, D.T., Alfaro, M.C., Balasubramaniam, A.S.,1993a. Improvement of soft Bangkok clay using vertical drains. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 12 (7), 615663. Bergado, D.T., Mukherjee, K., Alfaro, M.C., Balasubramaniam, A.S., 1993b. Prediction of vertical-band-drain performance by the nite-element method. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 12 (6), 567586. Bergado, D.T., Manivannan, R., Balasubramaniam, A.S., 1996. Proposed criteria for discharge capacity of prefabricated vertical drains. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 14, 481505. Bergado, D.T., Balasubramaniam, A.S., Fannin, R.J., Holtz, R.D., 2002. Prefabricated vertical drains (PVDs) in soft Bangkok clay: a case study of the New Bangkok International Airport project. Canadian Geotechnical Journal 39, 304315. Bo, M.W., 2004. Discharge capacity of prefabricated vertical drain and their eld measurements. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 22 (12), 3748. Bo, M.W., Chu, J., Low, B.K., Choa, V., 2003. Soil Improvement: Prefabricated Vertical Drain Technique. Thomson Learning, Singapore, ISBN 981-243-044-X, 341 pp. Broms, Chu, J., Choa, V., 1994. Measuring the discharge capacity of band drains by a new drain tester. In: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Geotextiles, Geomembranes and Related Products, Singapore, 59 September, vol. 3. pp. 803806. Chu, J., Bo, M.W., Choa, V., 2004. Practical consideration for using vertical drains in soil improvement projects. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 22, 101117. Chu, J., Bo, M.W., Choa, V., 2006. Improvement of ultra-soft soil using prefabricated vertical drains. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 24, 339348. Chai, J.-C., Miura, N., Nomura, T., 2004. Effect of hydraulic radiu on long-term drainage capacity of geosynthetics drains. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 22, 316. Chai, J.-C., Miura, N., Bergado, D.T., 2008. Preloading clayey deposit by vacuum pressure with cap-drain: analyses versus performance. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 26 (3), 220230. Holtz, R.D., 1987. Preloading with prefabricated vertical strip drains. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 6 (13), 109131. Holtz, R.D., Jamiolkowski, Lancellotta, R., Pedroni, R., 1991. Prefabricated Vertical Drains: Design and Performance, CIRIA Ground Engineering Report: Ground Improvement. Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd., London. Indraratna, Chu, 2005. Ground Improvement Case Histories. Elsevier. JTJ/T257-96, 1996. Quality Inspection Standard for Prefabricated Drains. Ministry of Communications, China. Li, A.L., Rowe, R.K., 2001. Combined effects of reinforcement and prefabricated vertical drains on embankment performance. Canadian Geotechnical Journal 38 (6), 12661282. Rowe, R.K., Li, A.L., 2005. Geosynthetic-reinforced embankments over soft foundations. Geosynthetics International 12 (1), 5085. Rowe, R.K., Taechakumthorn, C., 2008. Combined effect of PVDs and reinforcement on embankments over rate-sensitive soils. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 26 (3), 239249. Shen, S.-L., Chai, J.-C., Hong, Z.S., Cai, F.X., 2005. Analysis of eld performance of embankments on soft clay deposit with and without PVD-improvement. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 23, 463485. Sinha, A.K., Havanagi, V.G., Mathur, S., 2007. Inection point method for predicting settlement of PVD improved soft clay under embankments. Geotextiles and Geomembranes 25 (6), 336345.

Applied pressure (kPa)

b
Discharge capacity (ml/s)

150 125 100 75 50 25 0 100 Integrated Separable

150

200

250

300

350

Applied pressure (kPa)

Fig. 6. Comparison of discharge capacity tests on integrated and separable PVDs using (a) straight drain tester; and (b) buckled drain tester.

As a result, the discharge capacity would be overestimated under low pressure. Therefore, the results shown in Fig. 6(a) and (b) may not be compared directly. However, this does not affect the comparison of the two types of PVD when the same testing method is adopted. For the buckled drain, the discharge capacity at a low pressure may also be affected by how the membrane ts the PVD at the bending point. This explained why the discharge capacity of the buckled PVDs did not reduce gradually with the increase in applied pressure as was observed from the tests on straight PVD. 4. Conclusions A new type of PVD, the so called integrated PVD in which the core and lter are adhered together by heat melting, is introduced in this