Drilled displacement columns, constructed in the form of unreinforced or reinforced concrete elements, are currently a very commonly used method of improving soft subsoil, creating an alternative to more expensive pile foundations. A frequently used solution for improving soft soils of road or railway embankments is to design a regular pattern of columns of relatively small diameter. Columns along the perimeter of the improved area are reinforced with rigid steel profiles, while the internal ones are made as concrete elements. Column heads are usually covered with a load transfer platform (layer of compacted granular fill) which is additionally reinforced with geosynthetics.
The application of soil improvement with displacement columns is not always successful. It is due to the errors and shortcomings occurring at the design stage, including simplifications in modelling, to construction faults, which may include insufficient experience of contractors and/or improper supervision.
Referring to the real object that failed, the article provides the results of numerical parametric analyses taking into account the influence of the key design parameters such as: the stiffness of the load transfer layers, the amount and stiffness of the geosynthetic reinforcement as well as the column spacing. The article presents comparisons of numerical results obtained with the finite element analyses for various approaches to geometry modelling (axisymmetric, 2D and 3D). The simulations indicate that the use of the axisymmetric model of a single column in routine design may lead to the deformations exceeding the serviceability limit states.

Local roads in Poland, built for the most part in the previous economic system, are mostly unsuited to the ever-increasing traffic load, often built on a low-load organic substrate and need to be renovated. Linear objects are most often characterized by a significant variability in groundwater conditions in their area. The economical and safe design of the rebuild of a road structure often entails the need to implement ground improvement design of the low-bearing soil substrate, but areas of improvement should be adapted to the occurrence zones of low-bearing soil. The article presents a case study of the district road, for which ground and water conditions were recognized and organic soil were found. In addition to the rebuilding of the road structure to fulfill the requirements of the current traffic load and repairing the culverts, the reconstruction also included the ground improvement. The authors reviewed the types of road categories according to the admissible traffic loads (KR), the most important and commonly used methods of ground improvement, discussed the characteristics of the Benkelmann beam deflection method, proposed a design solution adapted to the existing conditions in the substrate and, after implementing it, presented the results of the deflection of the road before and after the reconstruction and soil improvement.

The presence of soft soil of river and organic genesis in the basement of road embankments creates problems related to their high deformability. Difficult to assess water permeability, affecting the course of the consolidation and settlement process, requires field studies, such as dilatometer tests. In engineering practice, there are many factors that can affect the basement consolidation process, but they are not simply applied to theoretical models. In many cases, only the observational method allows the selected computational approach to be applied to a specific engineering problem. For this reason, it is one of the approaches strongly emphasized by Eurocode 7. The article presents an example of the application of a temporary load from heavy construction traffic to the consolidation of soft soil under service roads with verification of the subsoil parameters using the dilatometer tests. A horizontal layer of weak soil, loaded with a vertical external load caused by temporary traffic, was assumed for the calculations. For such an arrangement, the classical solution of uniaxial Terzaghi’s consolidation with the water flow in the vertical direction was applied. A computational analysis of the consolidation time and maximum settlement values was performed.

Several field and model tests have been conducted to investigate the impact of pile installation on bearing capacity. However, little is known about how piles behave during installation, how they interact with the surrounding soil, and how this affects sandy soil properties. This review paper investigates the effect of pile driving on surrounding sandy soil as it compacts sandy soil near to the pile. For this purpose, various related literature was studied based on the observation of the pile installation effect on earth pressure or lateral stress, relative density, and pore water pressure in the sandy soil. A change in the deformation and stress state of surrounding sandy soil due to pile driving was presented. The installation of fully displacement piles can lead to significant stresses and deformations in the surrounding sandy soil. This is one of the main causes of uncertainty in the design and analysis of pile foundations. According to this study, the sandy soil around the pile is compacted during pile driving, resulting in lateral and upward displacement. This leads to the densification effect of pile driving on loose sandy soil. Sandy soil improvement with driven piles depends on pile shape, installation method, and pile driving sequences. This study concludes that in addition to its advantages of transferring superstructure load to deep strata, the increased relative density of loose sand, the change in the horizontal stress, and the influence of compaction on the sandy soil parameters during pile driving should be considered during pile design and analysis.

The use of subway tunnel engineering technology has become more professional and refined with the growth of society and the advancement of science and technology. The initial construction process of a subway tunnel shield is the most critical part of the entire engineering system. Shield launching period construction is the most prone to accidents in the shield construction process, directly related to the smooth through the shield tunnel. The line 1 of Ho Chi Minh (HCM) Metro is the first subway line, the full length of 19.7 km, the underground road length of 2.6 km from km 0 + 615 to km 2 + 360, from Ben Thanh market, and then through the Sai Gon river and 14 station (including 3 underground stations and 11 elevated stations), reach Suoi Tien park and is located in Long Binh area station, underground building blocks including Ben Thanh market station to Opera House station interval, Opera House station, Opera House station to Ba Son station interval. This paper selects Shield launching period of Opera House station to Ba Son shaft interval as an example, analyze the key construction technology, construction control parameters and launching considerations of shield machine.