Laboratory Study on Reinforced Expansive Soil with Granular Pile Anchors

Granular Pile Anchor (GPA) considers one of the solution foundation techniques, designed to mitigate the lifting of the sole resulting from expansive soils. This study work is to investigate the uplift movement response of GPA in expansive soil and evaluation performance in this soil. The effects of several parameters, such as length (L) of GPA and diameter (D), the thickness (H) of expansive clay layer and the existence sandy soil layer are investigated. The results evidenced the effectiveness and ability of GPA to reduce the lifting movement of the expansive soil and presented that the lifting movement can be decreased with rising length to some extent and the GPA diameter. The lifting movement of GPA-Foundation System is controlled by 3 separate variables, these are L/H and L/D ratios and diameter. The lifting movement can be decreased by up to (47%) if GPA is embedded in layer of expansive soil at L/H = 1, and by 83% if GPA is in expansive soil and extensive sandy soil is embedded at L/H = 1.4 with the similar GPA diameter and foundation.