Evaluation of compressive strength of cement-treated column by numerical simulation with conditional distribution

In the quality assurance procedures of cement-treated soil columns, it is important to evaluate appropriately the behavior of the full scale column from the cored sample strengths. This paper presents the numerical method that can predict the unconfined compressive behavior of a cement-treated soil column from which cored samples are retrieved. The finite element method with Monte Carlo simulation was used to investigate the compression behavior of the full scale column with spatial variability. A conditional simulation was conducted to evaluate the compressive strength of the full scale column with the fixed data values. A unconditional simulation without the fixed data values was also conducted for comparison. Results obtained in this study suggest that the conditional simulation offers benefits over the unconditional simulation for evaluating the overall strength of the cement-treated column from which the cored samples are retrieved.