Comparative experimental study on soft soil reinforcement by vacuum preloading with different band drains

At present, for the problem of poor reinforcement effect in the process of vacuum preloading using band drains, most of the existing studies focus on the vacuum preloading loading mode, while there is a lack of theoretical and experimental studies on the emerging drains of different structure types. In this study, three types of band drains are selected for vacuum preloading model tests, and the reinforcement law and effect of different band drains in the process of vacuum preloading are compared. The test results show that the soil moisture contents of soil treated by double-sided connected drains and straw band drains are reduced by 9% and 5% respectively as compared with the conventional band drains, and the vane shear strength is increased by 1.7 kPa and 1 kPa on average. It means that the double-sided connected band drains has better anti-silting performance, and the straw band drains can achieve better reinforcement effect than the common band drains while having the characteristics of environmental protection, which provides a new solution to solve the problem of poor reinforcement effect of vacuum preloading.