Improvement of soft peaty clays with different configurations of geosynthetic electrodes

Abstract

Laboratory investigations had been conducted at University of Moratuwa over last six years to study the possibility of the use of Electro-osmotic consolidation process to improve the soft peaty clays. The use of perforated stainless steel electrodes did not produced desired results due to corrosion of the electrodes. The use of the electrodes made of non corroding geosynthetics made it possible to apply the electro-osmosis process to peaty clays with polarity reversals and with increasing voltage gradients. This paper presents results of such a series of tests where different electrode configurations were tried out. Considerable improvement in strength and stiffness were achieved in peats of water content around 300%. When the water content was much higher around 600%, the process was not so effective. The power consumptions for the process was well within the economically viable limits.