Effectiveness of Head-Enlarged CDM Columns in Evaluating Settlement of Improved Grounds

Conventionally, cement deep mixing (CDM) columns are designed to have constant diameters over the improved depth as this facilitates the construction procedures. However, this design pattern may be inefficient in cases of spread footings or shallow foundations. This paper first briefly introduces principles of an improved CDM method that can create head-enlarged CDM (termed PF) columns. A simple analysis approach was introduced to obtain optimal shape of PF columns that results in minimum settlement. The effectiveness of this improved method over the conventional CDM method was then illustrated by settlement analysis for an actual footing in a case study using two recommended analytical methods in the literature. Analysis results from the case indicated that by using the same amount of soil-cement mixed volumes, settlement from a footing on PF columns can reduce up to 10 % compared with that from the same footing on CDM columns. In addition, a material quantity comparison for the case indicated that to have the same settlement values the volume of each PF column can be reduced of around 10% compared with that of the CDM column. INTRODUCTION The cement deep mixing (CDM) method is one of the most popular methods in ground improvement works. Details on the method such as construction procedures, necessary equipment and recommendations are described in many references or manuals (e.g. Bruce et al. 2013, BS EN 2015, Kitazume and Terashi 2013). Conventionally, CDM columns are designed to have constant diameters over the improved depth as this facilitates the construction procedures. However, this design pattern is found inefficient in cases of spread footings or shallow foundations as the upper soil layers are naturally weaker than the deeper ones but are subjected to larger amount of induced stress from the superstructures.