Vacuum preloading combined with horizontal drains has been increasingly applied to improve dredged soils. This study proposes a novel vacuum preloading method in which geotextiles are used directly as horizontal drains. Four model tests were conducted to evaluate the feasibility and consolidation mechanism in comparison with prefabricated horizontal drain (PHD) vacuum preloading. The results show that vacuum pressure was rapidly transmitted along the geotextile, reaching 87.6–94.9% of the applied vacuum pressure at the geotextile surface in the initial stage and remaining at approximately 92% at later stages. The degree of consolidation reached about 90%, exceeding that obtained using a single PHD. Non-uniform consolidation was observed, with a vacuum loss of approximately 20 kPa at 20 cm from the geotextile. After treatment, the water content and vane shear strength near the geotextile reached approximately 44% and 45 kPa, respectively. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) revealed predominantly vertical compression with negligible horizontal strain, indicating that the consolidation can be reasonably approximated as one-dimensional. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed reduced fine-particle intrusion into the geotextile due to its lower unit-area water flux. A double-layer consolidation model was introduced to predict the consolidation degree, and showed good agreement with the experimental measurements.
He et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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