Study on Geocell Role in Performance Improvement of Railways Ballast; Review on Case Studies

Nowadays one of the most important issues about constructing railways on soft soils is to provide bearing capacity and displacement control of the soil. Almost all of the methods for resolving this problem ar concentrated on such method as stone and concrete columns and so on. One of the newest methods that have been used earlier in roads and railways projects especially in constructing fills is to utilize ligh material instead of soil in the body of the fill. A novel group of geosynthetics material named as cellular confinement system (Geocell) has been introduced and used successfully in the industry. This system has been made of polymers like high density polyethylene (HDPE) and has cellular formation that makes it proper for new engineering approach in geotechnical construction. In this paper, a review of experimental tests and case studies carried out by different researchers on reinforced ballast with geocell had been presented. Test results indicated that the inclusion of reinforcement in the ballast decreased settlements and leading to an economic design of the rail way embankment.