doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7920-4_S2-G04-cd

ABSTRACT

Soft ground with low bearing capacities is found to extensive areas in the world, including densely populated and industrial areas in Japan. In addition, because of the earthquakes often occur in Japan, lifelines such as water pipes, gas pipes may be damaged by earthquake or differential settlement. Therefore, this paper focuses on the shallow soil improvement layer which was set under the lifelines to reduce the displacement and the damage of lifeline when earthquake or differential settlement occurs. In this study, Toyoura sand was used as model ground in experiments. Experiments were carried out with three different cases as follows. Case (i): by loading on the ground surface, it was measured ground deformation of the position where lifelines were embedding using a Shape-Accel-Array (SAA) in experiment. SAA is a sensor which can be embedded vertical or horizontal within a ground to monitor the deformation. Case (ii): lifelines were embedded in the ground, investigated the ground deformations and strains of lifelines, by loading on the ground surface. Case (iii): improvement layer was set under lifelines. The effect of shallow soil improvement could be checked by investigating the ground deformations and strains of lifelines. Then, the finite element method (FEM) incremental analyses were performed to compare the results from tests and analysis according to the experiments conditions.

Keywords: Shallow soil improvement, Lifeline, Model test, Incremental analysis.

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