Nonlinear Behaviour of an Embankment on Floating Stone Columns

This paper describes a benchmark problem for a floating stone columns supported embankment. In the 3D model, a thick soft subsoil deposit represented by Singapore marine clay was treated by floating stone columns to support a 2.0 m high embankment. The 3D numerical results were compared among different constitutive models such as the hardening soil model, soft soil model, modified Cam-clay model and Mohr-Coulomb model, highlighting the effect of non-linearity in the overall performance of the ground structure. The advanced constitutive soil models allow more realistic soil response to be investigated. From the numerical results, the Mohr-Coulomb model with elastic-perfectly plastic stress-strain response was able to give comparable total settlements but failed to demonstrate some intrinsic behaviours obtained with advanced soil models. These intrinsic behaviours include the mode of failure, displacements profile, stress transfer mechanism and rate of consolidation. This benchmark example has given us an improved understanding of the performance of floating stone columns when a more realistic soil behaviour is modelled.