BEARING CAPACITY OF SOIL BAGS ON SOFT GROUND REINFORCED BY BAMBOO PILE

Abstract

North Maluku is one of the archipelago provinces in Indonesia. As reported by the Ministry of
Public Works, this province has more than three thousand kilometers of coastline indicated to erosion [1].
The infrastructures and residences along coastal area have been frequently attacked by big waves. To protect
the coastal aforementioned from the risk of natural disaster, the local government must construct a robust
coastal bank. However, the bearing capacity of the soft ground is very weak for working as a bank. The
procedure of the bank construction includes: preparing the construction area, installing bamboo piles, laying
geo-bamboo on the piles, placing sandbags as the mattress and constructing selected materials. To make a
reasonable way for the design of foundation soil using traditional reinforcement system for a coastal bank, an
empirical calculation based on the rule of geotechnics has been discussed. The field CBR method was studied
by conducting the full scale of model soil bags on very soft soil reinforced bamboo pile. Finally, the bearing
capacity results of foundation soil were compared to the field CBR test for several properties of very soft soil,
dimensions of soil bags and bamboo piles.