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Transferring innovative research into practical wisdom: the case of permeation grouting

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Abstract

For decades, permeation grouting has been used as a cost-effective low disturbance ground improvement technology that allowed geotechnical engineers to help strengthening the soils and provide proper control of water flow. While permeation grouting can be a very useful solution, the design of an appropriate grouting program can be the difference between a successful job and an expensive on-the-go repair. However, current grout design relies heavily on rules of thumb and outdated charts. The geotechnical investigation is rarely targeted towards grouting design and the final grouting decisions are made based on index measurements such as fines content or soil classification at most. The collective “past experience” is more commonly used for final grouting design than any other geotechnical design despite that flow of grouts through porous media is a very complex phenomenon owing to the diversity of possible flow stoppage mechanisms involved. For some cases, rheological blocking occurs due to viscous grouts; however, in most cases, permeation is controlled by filtration. Despite the complexity of the science behind permeation grouting, practitioners often reference in situ heterogeneity and variability to dismiss the need for a more systematic design approach. However, heterogeneity and variability never stopped geotechnical engineers from performing proper design based on measured engineering properties of the soil and this should be the case for grouting as well. Particularly, with all the recent advances to grouting materials and its accompanying additives, grouting is now possible with more concentrated suspensions (lower w/c ratios) and the grouts are more “flowable” than ever before. These advances are making most of existing charts and common rules of thumb obsolete and therefore, it is the optimal time to implement recent advances in grouting research into common practice. Recent research on the topic highlights the complexities of grouting and the potential for implementing advanced laboratory testing to properly characterize the grouts and design it for field specific in situ conditions and desired final improved properties. This paper discusses these limitations in practice, advances in research and provides a case study where these advances were implemented to design a site-specific grout.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation, Geomechanics and Geomaterials program and Geotechnical engineering program, under Grant No. 1254763. This support is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Chadi S. El Mohtar, Ritika Sangroya & Hamza Jaffal

  2. Fugro USA Land, Inc., Houston, TX, USA

    Jisuk Yoon

Authors
  1. Chadi S. El Mohtar
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  2. Jisuk Yoon
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  3. Ritika Sangroya
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  4. Hamza Jaffal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chadi S. El Mohtar.

Additional information

This paper was selected from GeoMEast 2017—Sustainable Civil Infrastructures: Innovative Infrastructure Geotechnology.

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El Mohtar, C.S., Yoon, J., Sangroya, R. et al. Transferring innovative research into practical wisdom: the case of permeation grouting. Innov. Infrastruct. Solut. 2, 37 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41062-017-0093-4

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