In the financial year 2023-24, the Indian government invested 2.4 lakhs crore rupees in railway sector to develop the country’s transportation infrastructure. India has a long coastline of about 6000 km and thickness of weak deposits along the coastal lines vary from 10 to 30 m as reported in IRC-113 (2013). Most of the projects involved in the coastal regions have deep soft soil deposits. These deposits are vulnerable to potential failure due to excessive settlement which can adversely affect the stability of overlaid

railway tracks. To address these challenges in the construction of railway embankments on the soft subgrade soil, different ground improvement and/or modification techniques have been employed such as preloading or staged construction, vertical drain installation, installing the vertical columns such as rigid (concrete piles) and flexible (stone columns). Among the improvement techniques, installation of stone columns in soft soils serves as composite ground contributing to an overall improvement in the stability. Previous studies are related to the static behaviour of stone column improved soft ground and limited studies have been attempted on the dynamic behaviour of stone column supported embankments.
The present study aims to investigate the behaviour of stone column supported embankments on soft soil used in railway infrastructure subjected to moving train loads and seismic excitations. In this seminar, a detailed review of literature is presented in the beginning followed by critical appraisal, specific objectives of the current investigation and methodology adopted for the present study. A preliminary study is attempted where in the development of finite element (FE) model of the field study involving the stone column supported embankment. The FE results are compared with the field data.