Simplified analytical solution for geosynthetic tube resting on deformable foundation soil

When geosynthetic tubes are placed on soft ground, the ground settlement can be large enough to influence the design and performance of geosynthetic tubes. The existing method to model the ground deformation for the design of geosynthetic tubes is to use the Winkler model. In this paper, an analytical solution is proposed to calculate the impermeable geosynthetic tubes resting on deformable foundation soil. The proposed analytical method adopts the 1-D consolidation relationship (the e − log p curve) to describe approximately the stress–strain behavior of the soil. The vertical surcharge pressure distribution within the soil mass is calculated using the Boussinesq solution. The numerical analyses are also carried out using FLAC to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed method. The results from the analytical method agree well with those from the numerical analysis.