GEO-FRONTIERS 2005 GEOTECHNICAL SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS 130-142 AND GRI-I8 January 24-26, 2005 Austin, Texas SPONSORED BY The Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers Geosynthetic Materials Association of the Industrial Fabrics Association International Geosynthetic Institute EDITED BY Ellen M. Rathje, Ph.D, P.B ASCE Published by the American Society of Civil EngincersGSP 131 Contemporary Issues in Found: Engineering GEOGRID-REINFORCED AND PILE-SUPPORTED ROADWAY EMBANKMENT Reinaldo Vega-Meyer', Member, ASCE; Yong Shao’, PhD. Member, ASCE * Senior Project Manager-International Division, Tensar Earth Technologies, Inc., 5883 Glenridge Dr., Suite 200, Atlanta, GA. 30328 (USA); PH (404) 250-1290; FAX (404) 250-9185; email: rvegameyer@tensarcorp.com * Senior Geotechnical Engineer, Moreland-Altobelli Associates, Inc., 2211 Beaver Ruin Rd, Suite 190, Atlanta, GA. 30071 (USA); PH (770) 263-5945; FAX (770) 263-0166; email: yshao@moreland-altobelli.com ABSTRACT Settlement is one of the major concerns in roadway embankment construction in areas where soft soil deposits constitute the major portion of subsurface soil. A pile foundation system is an effective way to support an embankment in order to minimize total settlement. In recent years, geosynthetic reinforcement has been successfully incorporated with pile foundations to improve settlement performance. Referred to a8 Load Transfer Platform (LTP), or Geosynthetic Reinforced Platform (GRP), the system combines vertical piles and horizontal geosynthetics to form a relatively stiff platform that transfers embankment load to a deeper, competent bearing layer. The Beosynthetic layers serve as the tensioned platform that bridges over the piles and reduces the differential settlement at top of the platform, which in tum reduces the differential settlement of the embankment. After a brief discussion of the system mechanism, this paper focuses on a case study of a roadway embankment supported by a geogrid-reinforced platform and precast concrete piles in Colon City, Republic of Panama. The embankment, a MSE (Mechanically Stabilized Earth) retaining wall with a maximum height of 3.2 meters, was built on a 1.0-meter thick geogrid reinforced crushed stone LTP, which is supported by 30 cm diameter precast piles. Piles penetrate through 6 meters of organic clay to a very dense sandy silt bearing layer, 10 meters below the existing ground surface. Due to the complexity of the system a numerical method was used to model the system and evaluate settlement behavior. This paper presents a detailed discussion of the project information, the design methodology and the numerical modeling. In addition, field instrumentation is also presented in comparison with the design and analysis.GSP 131 Contemporary Issues in Foundation Engineering INTRODUCTION ‘When building an embankment over a soft soil deposit, engineers face a challenging problem: how to effectively reduce the settlement so that the structures on top of the embankment only experience a tolerable amount of deformation during their service life. To achieve this objective, several different ways have been practiced throughout the years; they are: conventional embankments on a selected granular material (over- excavation and replacement), piled embankments, piled embankments containing a continuous concrete slab, and piled embankments with a geosynthetic-reinforced platform system (GRP). A typical configuration of a GRP or LTP supported embankment is shown in Figure 1. The addition of the reinforcement in the LTP system increases the stiffness of the platform that enables higher percent load transfer fiom the soil to the piles and, therefore, reduces the differential settlement between pile caps so that no significant settlement occurs at the top of the embankment. Geosynthetic-reinforced fill platform Small size Pile caps Firm soil or bedrock Vertical piles Figure 1. Geosynthetic-Reinforced and Pile-Supported (GRP) Embankments Evolved from conventional piled embankments, the GRP system results in a more uniform distribution of the settlement in between piles due to the bridging function of geosynthetic reinforcements. In addition, the GRP system generally does not require battered piles, close pile spacing or large pile caps, which makes it more economically competitive. Figure 2 shows a comparison between the percent coverage by pile caps requirements for two systems: Concrete Pile System (CPS, Rathmayer, 1975) and Geosynthetic Reinforced Platform System (GRP, Han, 1999). ‘The percent coverage herein is defined as the percentage of the total area of pile caps or columas to that of foundation footprint. In this figure, the design percentage of pile cap coverage for thirteen actual geosynthetic-reinforced and pile-supported earth platforms are plotted for comparison purposes. It is shown that the required percent coverage of pile (caps) with geosynthetic is lower than the suggested by Rathmayer for the conventional pile-supported embankments, and is consistently less than 20%.