Road Embankment Full-Scale Investigation on Soft Soil With Geotextile Stabilization

Abstract

When building roads in swampy areas, several problems include soil with low bearing capacity, scarce and expensive embankment materials are often met. Although local materials can be an alternative for backfill materials, this research focuses on the use of local soil as backfills by utilizing geotextile as soil stabilization. The case study was conducted in Tapin, South Kalimantan. The trial embankment method was used; thus, the road performance was observed primarily in a quite long time – not only because of the soil layers but also because of the traffic above it. Two types of embankment models were used. Embankment 1 utilized the ordinary backfill material transported from off-site. Whereas the backfill used for the Embankment 2 was local material. The number of geotextile layers installed was adjusted to the stability analysis of each embankment. A couple of direct observations were done, such as vertical settlement and horizontal deformation using a settlement plate and inclinometer, respectively. The numeric analysis was also performed using a finite element method to learn the influence of the geotextile toward embankment stability. The result shows that the settlement that occurs to the embankment with the usual backfill material is bigger than the one with the combination of the local soil. There is no difference in the visual values of the road between the ordinary backfill material and the local backfill material.