The application of stone column technique for improvement of soft soils has attracted a considerable attention during the last decade. However, in a very soft soil, the stone columns undergo excessive bulging, because of very low lateral confinement pressure provided by the surrounding soil. The performance of stone column can be improved by the encapsulation of stone column by geosynthetic, which acts to provide additional confinement to columns, preventing excessive bulging and column failure. In the present study, a detailed experimental study on behavior of single column is carried out by varying parameters like diameter of the stone column, length of stone column, length of geosynthetic encapsulation and stiffness of encapsulation material. In addition, finite-element analyses have been performed to access the radial deformation of stone column. The results indicate a remarkable increase in load carrying capacity due to encapsulation. The load carrying capacity of column depends very much upon the diameter of the stone column and stiffness of encapsulation material. The results show that partial encapsulation over top half of the column and fully encapsulated floating column of half the length of clay bed thickness give lower load carrying capacity than fully encapsulated end bearing column. In addition, radial deformation of stone column decreases with increasing stiffness of encapsulation material.
In the present theoretical analysis, the combined effects of slider curvature and non-Newtonian pseudoplastic and dilatant lubricants (lubricant blended with viscosity index improver) on the steady and dynamic characteristics of pivoted curved slider bearings have been investigated for Rabinowitsch fluid model. The modified Reynolds equations have been obtained for steady and damping states of bearing. To solve the modified Reynolds equations, perturbation theory has been adopted. The results for the steady state characteristics (steady state film pressure, load carrying capacity and centre of pressure) and dynamic characteristics (dynamic damping and dynamic stiffness) have been calculated numerically for various values of viscosity index improver using Mathematica. In comparison with the Newtonian lubricants, higher values of film pressure, load carrying capacity, dynamic damping and dynamic stiffness have been obtained for dilatant lubricants, while the case was reversed for pseudoplastic lubricants. Significant variations in the bearing characteristics have been observed for even small values of pseudoplastic parameter, that is, with the non-Newtonian dilatant and pseudoplastic behaviour of the fluid.