Stone Columns - Determination of the soil improvement factor

A stone column is one of the soil stabilizing methods that is used to increase strength, decrease the compressibility of soft and loose fine graded soils, accelerate a consolidation effect and reduce the liquefaction potential of soils. The columns consist of compacted gravel or crushed stone arranged by a vibrator. This paper deals with Priebe's theory (1976) on the design of an improvement factor, which belongs among the most used analytical methods and also describes the numerical and laboratory models of stone columns. The improvement factors calculated from numerical and laboratory models are compared with the improvement factors resulting from Priebe's theory.