Emerging Trends in Ground Improvement Techniques B.S.Asha 1 , B. Ram Rathan Lal 2 , A. H. Padade 3 , T. Mandal 4 and J. N. Mandal 5 1,2,3 Research Scholar, 5 Professor Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, India. Email:09404802@.iitb.ac.in 4 Under Graduate Student, Civil Engineering Department, Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Mumbai, India. ABSTRACT The developing countries like India are facing challenging infrastructure projects on fine grained compressible soft foundation soils in the areas of airways, highways and railways. Therefore it is necessary to develop new innovative ground improvement techniques, which should be technically feasible and economically viable for the applications in civil engineering. Therefore an attempt has been focused in this paper to provide new techniques for ground improvement using Natural Prefabricated Vertical Drains (NPVD) and Polymer Prefabricated Vertical Drains (PPVD), geocell and geofoam. The flow rate with different hydraulic gradients has been compared with NPVD and PPVD. It is observed that the flow rate of NPVD is lower with respect to PPVD. Three dimensional geocell mattresses made of geosynthetic material and expanded polystyrene geofoam has been used in swelling soils. The finite element analysis has been carried out without and with geocell system using PLAXIS 2D professional version as a tool. It has been observed that the new system reduces settlement and improves the bearing capacity. Also Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) geofoam has been used as a fill material in the embankments which is an effective solution against the conventional fill material. The slope stability analysis of embankment has been carried out with conventional fill and EPS geofoam using PLAXIS 2D professional software. It has been observed that there is considerable increase in the factor of safety of the embankment made up of EPS geofoam with respect to conventional fill. Using geofoam as filling material a significant reduction in settlement has been observed. INTRODUCTION With the advent of geosynthetics, the revolution of different ground improvement systems for weak or soft soils are picking up at an unprecedented pace. The technical viability and economic feasibility is the first priority in any upcoming projects. The demand is increasing for the construction of different types of projects on soft soil. In such circumstances, it is necessary to improve the ground in order to achieve the adequate soil bearing capacity and tolerable settlements. It is difficult to adopt some of the ground improvement systems in Indian condition in terms of (a) availability of material (b) cost (c) time (d) cumbersomeness (e) space availability (f) high energy consumption and (g) environmental friendliness. Keeping these points, alternate ground improvement systems for soft soil which are suitable under 594 GeoCongress 2012 © ASCE 2012