Displacement-based design method to increase sustainability of pile-supported embankments: Practical application

Concrete piles and geosynthetic reinforcements are commonly used to reduce settlements at the top of embankments. The use of geosynthetic layers at the embankment bottom leads to several advantages: (i) faster construction, (ii) better control of differential settlements and (iii) a fewer number of piles is needed for equal admissible settlements at the embankment top. Because of the latter point, the use of geosynthetic reinforcement reduces the Embodied Carbon related to concrete. Unfortunately, since existing design methods for Geosynthetic-Reinforced and Pile-Supported embankments do not allow to calculate settlements at the embankment top, they cannot be used to optimize the number of concrete piles to increase sustainability. In this note, an innovative model for assessing settlements induced by the embankment construction process is applied to the preliminary design stage of a practical example. The mass of CO2 saved by using geosynthetics and optimizing the number of piles is calculated.