Large sites underlain by loose materials can be effectively treated using our dynamic compaction process.
The technique involves dropping heavy weights (8-40 tonnes) from heights of up to 30m to create very high energy impacts, which results in the immediate reduction of void spaces improving both bearing capacity and settlement characteristics.
Benefits
- Enhanced bearing capacity
- A reduction in the total and differential settlements
- Particularly suitable to non-organic, non-homogeneous fill, made ground, and reclamation areas with variable characteristics
- Underground obstructions (e.g. boulders) do not hinder the process
- Ground bearing foundations can be adopted following treatment
- High coverage making it economical for large areas
Application
- Commercial/industrial foundations and floor slabs with high tolerances
- Infrastructure schemes including embankments, water treatment plants and windfarms
- Ports and reclaimed land
- Treatment of landfill sites (volume reduction)
Presentation and key elements
What is Dynamic Compaction and when is it suitable?
Since being invented and developed by Louis Menard in the 1960s, the Menard group has applied this solution to thousands of sites globally in a wide range of sectors and ground conditions.
Used within port and airport platforms, heavy storage structures, buildings and waste landfills, it reduces settlement, mitigates liquefaction, stabilises or treats hydraulic fill and limits lateral earth pressure behind quay walls. It results in deep ground densification by the dynamic effects of high energy impacts resulting from the drop of large pounders.
Fundamentals of Dynamic Compaction
The technique requires the transmission of high energy waves through a compressible soil layer, improving the soil’s geotechnical properties. Dynamic Compaction is compatible in all granular soil types, and is adaptable to non-organic heterogeneous fill, man-made ground and reclamation areas with different properties. It is also effective in unsaturated and saturated soils below the water table.
Dynamic Compaction solutions
With the use of pounders, weighing between 8 to 40 tonnes, free falling from drop heights of up to 30 metres, Dynamic Compaction delivers targeted ground densification.
The arrangement of impact points for the pounders, energies, phasing and rest periods can be adapted to suit the characteristics of the soil for treatment and can be modified subject to the results of the initial trial zone.
