Effect of Prefabricated Vertical Drains and Electro-Osmosis in treating consolidation problems in soils.

In general, a given soil must reach full consolidation before any structure can be built on
it. It is critical that all excess water be removed from the soil before construction begins.
However, fine-grained, compressible soils have a low permeability and therefore it take a
very long time to consolidate. To achieve the desired consolidation rate, various method
and techniques are presently used at construction site.
This project makes comparison between using Prefabricated Vertical Drains, Electro-
Osmosis, and the traditional way by surcharging method as a consolidation tools. Tests
were done initially to determine the soil characteristic to be used in the experiment.
Consecutively, a Perspex prototype was build in order to conduct a scaled-down lab test
and the data is collected on a regular basis from a computer used to take down
compression gauge readings. Effectiveness measured in terms of soil settlement and
reductionin moisture contentand increase in shear strengthin the sample tested. The data
is then plotted into graph for comparison analysis to be done.
The end results show that the electro-osmosis is a better way to consolidate the soil tested
gauging form the improvement in the above mentioned soil characteristic.