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SOFT CLAY DRAINAGE CONSOLIDATION USING ELECTRICALLY CONDUCTIVE WICK DRAINS (ECWD)
Session: Problematic Soils and Ground Improvement II / Sols problématiques et amélioration du comportement II
Wei-lie Zou, Wuhan University (China)
Yan-feng Zhuang, Wuhan University (China)
Xie-qun Wang, Wuhan University of Technology (China)
Sai K. Vanapalli, University of Ottawa (Canada)
Electro-osmosis (EO) methods have not been widely used for the drainage consolidation of soft clay in practice because of two key problems; (i) metal electrode corrosion, and (ii) high electric energy consumption. With the recent advancements in the conductive plastics, there has been interest in using conductive plastic electrodes instead of metal electrodes to accelerate the drainage of soft clay. This paper presents the details of an in-situ EO test using a new patented electrically conductive wick drain (ECWD) and a specially designed power supply system on a hydraulically-filled sludge ground in Jiangsu Province, China. Field and laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the improvement effectiveness after performing EO for a period of 21 days. The electric energy consumption for this EO treatment is 5.2 kwh/m3. Moreover, prediction models for electric current, and cumulative drainage, Q during EO are also proposed based on the undertaken studies. Investigations to date suggest that the new ECWD presented in this paper is encouraging for consolidating the soft clays with relatively high water content and high plasticity index to achieve favorable conditions with respect to increase in shear strength at a relatively low cost.
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