The practice of pre-compression with sand drains is a widely accepted soil stabilization method for improving soft soil deposits. The scarcity of quality sand contributed to the substitution of a more cost-effective material. An effort was made in the present investigation to utilize waste products like quarry dust (QD), coir pith (CP), fly ash (FA), and rice husk ash (RHA) as the vertical drain in clayey soils. A sand drain (SD) has been used for comparison purposes. Kuttand Clay (KC) and Cochin marine clay (CMC) was selected for the study. Tests were conducted on conventional oedometer cells with a diameter of 6 cm and a height of 2 cm using vertical and radial consolidation models. In addition, this paper demonstrated the effect of the density of drain on radial consolidation characteristics. From the analysis, it was observed that the rate of consolidation increases with the inclusion of any drain material. The radial coefficient of consolidation using sand, quarry dust, and coir pith drain shows a higher value when comparing with the other drain material, which can be owing to their high permeability. The present study can recommend that the quarry dust and coir pith drain, or maybe the combination can be a better alternative for the sand drain.

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