بهمن نیرومند

One of the oldest systems to reinforce foundations in soft soils is using cast-in-place drilled concrete piers. In the recent years, using rammed aggregate piers has gained great attention as a simple, scientific and economical method to reinforce soft soils and as an alternative to deep foundations. This paper is the second part of a two-parted research and aims to investigate the behavior of two groups of five cast-in-place drilled concrete piers and five rammed aggregate piers with constant diameter and variable length, under compressive load using finite element method. In the first part of research, the results of the field study of comparing these two groups were presented. The modeling of piers was performed by Plaxis 2D software. The results of modeling were in good accordance with results of field study. Investigating the piers showed that rammed aggregate piers had better performance due to their behavior and the simplicity of the method and their economic benefits.