Analysis of cement-stabilized soil on road embankment employing finite element analysis - a case study

Abstract The application of stabilized soil is fast expanding around the world, and it is delivering improvements to the construction industry. Stabilized soil is a popular choice for reinforcing road embankments around the world. A layer of cement-stabilized soil can reduce the settlement of the soil layer below the embankments. This case study compares the long-term settlement of road embankments with and without cement-stabilized soil layers of the Chittagong Port Access Road located at Teknaf Bangladesh. The settlement analysis of the road embankment was performed using the Finite Element Analysis with Plaxis2D. In this study, two forms of sequence modeling were used. First, the settlement of a road embankment without reinforcement was examined. The second modeling step was to determine the settlement of an embankment reinforced with a cement-stabilized soil layer. Following the simulation, a comparison was performed. Additionally, the effect of cement content (4%, 8%, and 12%), compaction energy, and single, double, and triple layers of cement-stabilized soil on long-term settlement along with the factor of safety of the embankment have been addressed. The results demonstrated that using this specific cement-stabilized soil below the road embankment has decreased the long-term settlement of the soil while increasing the safety of the embankment compared to that without the cement-stabilized soil reinforcement.