4. Conclusion

After a preliminary section demonstrating the importance of high-quality geotechnical investigations to enable an informed choice of the right soil improvement technique, this article looks at mass densification methods without additives.

What all these methods have in common is that, in the end, they reduce the soil's voids index, thereby compacting the soil and increasing the mechanical properties of the treated material. They therefore improve the soil uniformly in terms of mass, and are therefore better suited to distributed-load structures.

In granular soils, compaction can be achieved by dynamic mechanical action, which first destructures the soil and then rearranges the particles into a more compact state. These mechanical impulses may consist of high-energy shocks applied to the surface, as in the case of dynamic compaction, or vibrations...