ELECTRO OSMOSIS, CONDUCTIVE POLYMERS, AND SOIL DEWATERING

In order to accommodate the ever-increasing world demand for usable land area resulting from spiraling industrial demand and population pressure, it has become necessary to develop landforms which heretofore have been considered marginal use for land development. Examples of these marginal landforms include near shore soft marine deposits, under consolidated fine grain riverine deposits, and organic soil deposits. Often these geologic landforms consist of weak saturated fine grain deposits that would be unstable when subjected to external loads. This paper explores an approach that consolidates and strengthens soft saturated geologic deposits using the phenomena of electro osmosis in conjunction with conductive polymers in pre-fabricated vertical drains (PVDs) as the driving force needed to dewater such soils. Experiments in the laboratory and the field have successfully demonstrated the viability of using intrinsically conductive polymers as a component of PVDs to facilitate the rapid consolidation and strengthening of soft geologic deposits.