Drain Capacity of PVD Filter Considering the Field Condition

PVD (Prefabricated Vertical drain) consists of filter and core. An effective PVD has two basic filtration functions ; first to retain soil particle ; and second, to allow water to pass from the soil into the PVD core without clogging or blinding. Clogging which reduces the permeability of the geotextile filter jacket is caused by fine particles penetrating into the geotextile filter jacket in relatively low permeability soil conditions. As clogging performance increases gradually, excess pore water flow from soil is resisted and finally consolidation delays. Current soil-geotextile filter system criteria are generally based on relationships between a representative pore size of the geotextile and particle size of the soil. In Korea, PVD geotextile filter system criteria have been applied by only testing AOS (Apparent Opening Size) of filters without evaluating the filtration and clogging performance on soil-geotexile filter systems. Therefore, the filtration tests on soil-geotexile filter systems were conducted in order to evaluate the filtration and clogging performance with 3 kinds of geotextile filters. On these tests, we have applied geotextile filter system criteria on PVD in sites.