A Study On The Effectiveness Of Ground Improvement Techniques / M.F Ahmad, N.A. Zakaria, M.R. Selamat

A railway track has been constructed connecting industrial petrochemical complexes in Terengganu
to Kuantan Port, all are in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The route passes mostly through low
lying swampy areas which are seasonally affected by monsoon flooding. Site investigations conducted
along the route had indicated the dominant presence of soft, fine grained and soft, loose,
coarse grained soils, except in a few hill locations. As railway tracks are sensitive to settlement and
have small tolerance for it, a massive ground improvement work was implemented at site.
Because of high cost investment for equipment in the implementation of the ground improvement
work, specialist contractors implementing them are local branches of international contractors. The
non-availability of published local research on ground improvement techniques results in ineffective
selection of technique for ground improvement work. With these limitations, based on experience
from the field work on the railway track, work is on going to compare the effectiveness of ground
improvement technique.
The four main ground improvement methods that were implemented and will be studied are Prefabricated
Vertical Drain (PVD), Vibro-Compaction (VC), Dynamic Compaction (DC), and Stone Column
(VR). From actual field data collected, comparison between one form of improvement to another
in terms of the original soil type corresponding to, amount of work required by, and constraints
faced while carrying out each type of improvement will be studied.