The combination of bamboo grid and concrete pile as soil reinforcement under the embankment

Material availability and economic price make bamboo a viable option for soil reinforcement. Grids made of split bamboo rods require reinforcement with concrete piles, which are known to have a good bearing capacity under the embankment. The combination of these materials allows reducing the settlement and deflection of the bamboo grid as a subgrade on peat. However, research is needed to get the distance and length of a pile that can provide significant performance in supporting the embankment load. In this research, the pile system with diameters of 2 cm was driven into the peat layer to a certain length and distance. The piles have a length of 15 cm and 25 cm in peat soil layers. The piles were connected monolithically with a bamboo grid using a wire. The pile’s distance was 5–20 cm. The peat soil was compacted layer by layer with a total thickness of 50 cm close to the field density. The embankment load was applied in three stages over one day with pressure of 3.02 kPa at each stage. The reinforcement proved to reduce the settlement and the deflection of the bamboo grid. The results showed that the combination of grid bamboo with concrete piles can be used for reinforcement purposes on peat soils on the following conditions: if L/H = 0.3, the ratio s/d ≤ 2.5; if L/H = 0.5, the ratio s/d ≤ 7.5.