Ground improvement using soil–cement columns: Experimental investigation

The construction of heavy structures on soils of low relative density is a challenging task. The inclusion of soil–cement columns produced by the deep mixing method is one of the soil stabilizing techniques that could be applied successfully to overcome this challenge. Nevertheless, this technique did not receive a considerable attention in Egypt yet. In the first part of this study, two different natural silty sand soils extracted from the Delta of the River Nile were mixed with cement to prepare samples of different cement doses and different water cement ratios. After curing, the hardened samples were tested and their unconfined compressive strength was investigated. The second part of this study investigates the interaction between a strip footing model and Nile deltaic soil improved by a group of soil–cement columns. Results of the first part of this study showed that the compressive strength of the investigated Nile delta soils could be increased even at lower values of cement doses. Results extracted from the second part of this study showed that a considerable settlement reduction up to 80% could be achieved depending on both the number and the length of the soil–cement columns that is used to improve the soil.