ABSTRACT
Stone column technique is well established to improve soft soil performance. However, an alternative material is proposed to enhance the soft soil performance by reinforcing with geofoam materials. Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) geofoam is a super-weighted geosynthetic material used in various geotechnical engineering applications. This study deals with the innovative use of geofoam as a column material in soft soils to improve bearing capacity. This method has been developed in small-scale laboratory tests and a series of loading tests have been performed on different single floating geofoam columns with two different diameters and a length to diameter ratio of 5. Then, a comparison was made with the results of ordinary stone columns and reinforced stone columns to obtain the advantages of geomofume columns. By considering the bearing capacity, it was found that geofoam columns could be a suitable alternative material to improve the bearing capacity of soft soils. The results showed that the efficiency of geofoam columns is almost similar to ordinary stone columns and geofoam is easy and economical to use.
