Hi Sudheer,

It gives you the skin frictional resistance along the length of the stone column. Particularly, in geosynthetics (Geotextile or geogrid) encased stone columns, it is essential to model interface and assign interface friction angle and cohesion properties on either side of the geosynthetic material to obtain good agreement with experimental outcomes.

Regards,

Ramesh.

There is drawback in the frictional behavior of the geogrid/ stone column in the PLAXIS. You should try other FEM Software like ABAQUS for better capture of the frictional behavior.

Mr.Sudheer,

You can simulate the problem even without introducing interface element between the stone column and the soil but you could not capture the actual magnitude of stress transfer from the stone column and the soil. In view of this, you have to insert an interface element between the stone column and the soil. This interface element is used to predict the actual stress transfer between two disimilar material under the applied load. Goodman theory is used to predict the interface behaviour under the applied load. ok all the best..

The interface element was implemented in PLAXIS to connect the nodes of two different material together and model the interaction between the structure and soil and allow to simulate the friction resistant and the relative movement (slipping and gapping) and avoid the overlap between the element of soil and structure.