Soft Ground Improvement by Deep Cement-Mixing Technique in Southern Vietnam

Abstract

This paper examines the application of deep cement-mixing technique in improving engineering properties of soft grounds at nine different sites in southern Vietnam’s typical soft soil deposits. The exercise consisted of running a series of laboratory tests on undisturbed soil samples and their mix designs with cement, and of field trials followed by field application of 500,000 m of the cement treated columns having 600mm diameter. The field treatment was done using Dry Jet Mixing (DJM) technique. After the field trials and applications, cores were extracted from the treated grounds to evaluate improvement in their engineering characteristics. Both the laboratory and the field results revealed a drastic enhancement in strength, stiffness, and permeability of the treated soft soils, thus establishing the deep cement-mixing technique’s capability to treat southern Vietnam’s soft grounds.