Published
2026-10-20
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Reinforcement mechanism and field performance of bamboo pile and bamboo raft foundations for ultra-soft ground in a shallow tidal flat
Yongqiang Ye
The First Engineering Co., Ltd. of CCCC First Harbor Engineering Bureau
Tianxiong Liu
The First Engineering Co., Ltd. of CCCC First Harbor Engineering Bureau
Keywords: bamboo pile; bamboo raft; ultra-soft soil; ground improvement; consolidation
Abstract
A sea dike expressway across thick marine clay must resist bearing failure during filling and limit the post-construction settlement of the pavement. The paper reports the reinforcement mechanism and the field behaviour of a bamboo pile and bamboo raft foundation below a 3.889 km sea dike expressway on the north coast of Central Java, Indonesia. Bamboo piles 8 m long, each formed from seven culms bound with nylon rope and driven in a 1 m square grid at both toes, act as anchor and anti-slide elements, and a 13-layer bamboo raft about 1.5 m thick carries the surcharge on clay 35-40 m thick. A numerical model gave a peak Mises stress of 5.22 MPa in the piles, an Asaoka analysis of 56 settlement plates gave an ultimate settlement of 2085-4123 mm, and ten inclinometers gave a lateral displacement of 20-230 mm.
References
[1] Barron, R. A. (1948). Consolidation of fine-grained soils by drain wells. Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, 113, 718-742.
[2] Kjellman, W. (1952). Consolidation of clay soils by atmospheric pressure. Proceedings of a Conference on Soil Stabilization , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, 258-263.
[3] Chu, J., Yan, S. W., Yang, H. (2000). Soil improvement by the vacuum preloading method for an oil storage station. Géotechnique , 50(6), 625-632.
[4] Liu, J., Li, J., Lei, H., Zheng, G., Jin, Y. (2022). Ground improvement of dredged fills with two improved vacuum preloading methods: Case study. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering , 148(12), 05022007.
[5] Rochim, A., Latifah, K., Supriyadi, B. (2020). Characterization of compression and tensile properties of bamboo Jawa (Gigantochloa atter) and bamboo Apus (Gigantochloa apus) for application as soil reinforcement. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science , 498, 012040.
[6] Widodo, B., Pratikso, Rochim, A., Irsyam, M., Widoanindyawati, V. (2019). Influence of bamboo pile clusters in the pile mattress bamboo construction systems as reinforcement of soft subgrade that support embankment load. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering , 527, 012055.
[7] Hu, Y., Chen, S., Xie, C., Zhong, W., Yin, H., Luo, Z., Luo, B., Liang, B., He, M., Huang, J. (2022). Feasibility study on the bamboo grid instead of geogrid for soil-rock mixture subgrade reinforcing. Materials, 15(12), 4047.
[8] Asaoka, A. (1978). Observational procedure of settlement prediction. Soils and Foundations, 18(4), 87-101.