THE THIN LINE BETWEEN DEEP FOUNDATIONS AND SOIL IMPROVEMENT ABSTRACT

Deep foundations have been the historical and conventional solution to support heavy loads in poor capacity soils; however during the past decades ground improvement has successfully been able to provide competitive and economical technical foundation solutions by increasing the ground mechanical properties, and thereby increasing bearing capacity, and reducing total, differential, and creep settlements. More recent ground improvement techniques, such as Controlled Modulus Columns (CMC), that are based on the concept of introducing cementitious columnar inclusions into soft grounds are often confused with in-situ piling methods. This paper will discuss the concept of CMC, its design philosophy, the way it behaves and a case study will be presented to demonstrate its application.