Monitoring and Modeling Grout Efficiency of Lifting Structure in Soft Clay

Abstract

An inclined eight-story reinforced concrete building on a thick soft clay deposit was leveled by compensation grouting with short gel time grout injected through sleeved pipes. The monitoring system is used to record the injected grout volume, the mat foundation’s heaved volume after grouting, and the mat foundation’s settled volume during pore pressure dissipation. The grouting efficiencies improved from negative value to less than one, and the stress histories of clay soils changed from normally consolidated to overconsolidated states. A final compensation efficiency of 9.78% was achieved and the building was successfully leveled. A series of numerical simulations were conducted to assess the capability of compensation grouting modeling. The numerical simulation results indicate that the consolidation behavior and the stress history of clayey foundation soils can be modeled reasonably well. However, the computed final grout efficiency is larger than that from the monitoring data because the simulation of fracture grouting by volumetric strain input is more like compaction grouting mode rather than fracture grouting mode, and this induces lesser excess pore pressure, lesser settlement and higher grout efficiency. These findings are also confirmed from other researchers’ laboratory and field testing results.