Numerical study of failure behavior of cement-treated column with spatial variability

It is well known that strength of soil treated by cement deep mixing is highly variable, even at a single column, due to variability of the in-situ soil, variability of mixing effectiveness, and other factors. This paper presents the numerical experiments that investigate the effect of the spatial correlation on the mechanical behavior of full scale column. Finite element analyses were performed to simulate the unconfined compression and tension behaviors of the samples in which material properties vary spatially. The numerical results indicated that the spatial autocorrelation affected significantly the compression and tension behaviors of the full scale cement-treated column.