Vertical Wick Drain

Ceteau Wick Drain
Prefabricated Vertical Drains (PVD), also called Wick Drains, are prefabricated drain strips consisting of a polypropylene core extruded into a configuration to transmit a maximum water flow on both sides of the core. The core is wrapped in a non-woven filter, ultrasonically welded together at at the edges. Ground improvement using PVD is applied in areas with compressible water saturated soils such as peat, clay and silty clays, where significant settlements may occur. In addition, increased pore pressure may cause instability of the soil which can result in slip plane failures.Since water is effectively incompressible, soils must be drained in order for the soil skeleton to support the weight of a new loading condition such as a road embankment, a hydraulic fill or a dike. The prefabricated vertical drains are installed vertically into soft soils in order to shorten the path water must travel,thus accelerating the consolidation. By shortening the drainage path by means of PVD in finesoils, such as silts and clays, it only takes weeks or months instead of years, for the water to escape and the soil to realign into a configuration capable of supporting the new loads. The advantage of using CeTeau-Drain is the reduced construction time and the elimination of the risk of slip plane failure due to maximum efficiency in discharging pore water, whereby the filter jacket provides the optimum filtration and permeability.

Manufacturing  
The CeTeau-Drain is manufactured by Geoplast Co. Ltd. in Rayong Province, Thailand and Capital Envoy (M) Sdn Bhd in Shah Alam, Malaysia. The total capacity of our factories is 100,000,000 meters per year. We manufacture our drains using only high grade polypropylene, which does not contain any additional chemicals that can pollute the soil. The filter jacket is made from specially selected non- woven materials that ensure high tensile strength in combination with a low elongation, so that deformation of the drain a high lateral pressure is kept to a minimum. The filter is available in a wide weight range and can be adapted to the local soil structure. CeTeau-Drain is produced under a strict quality control process. The production facilities in Thailand as well as Malaysia have been certified to the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management Systems standard by the UKAS-accredited certification bodies AJA Registrars (AJA08/12988) and Global Group (7556213810) respectively. Please provide us your requirements and we will manufacture a drain exceeding your expectation. For more information please visit www.geoplast.asia

Applications
Vertical drains are mostly used to shorten the settlement period and thus reduce the construction period of a project, and to avoid post-construction differential settlements. By applying a temporary preload on top of the embankment or fill, the consolidation period can be reduced even more. On top of that, a part of the secondary settlement is also eliminated. Especially for peat soils, an extra preload can be very effective3

Main Applications
‣ Roads, Railways, Dikes and Airports
‣ Land Reclamation
‣ Harbor Construction
‣ Urban and industrial sites    

Other Applications
‣ Stabilization of slopes
‣ De-watering to lower aquifers
‣ Vacuum consolidation
‣ Degassing of landfills        

Installation    
The CeTeau-Drain is installed with a in house developed high speed installation rig. The drain stitcher is designed to install 100mm PVD. The hydraulic rig does not need a separate power pack or other additional equipment The installation grid will be set out, based on the geotechnical analyses. The drain runs through the top of the mandrel back to the ground.

The drain will be wrapped around the fixture on the anchor plate and the folded end of the wrapped drain will be pulled back into the mandrel, until the plate rests against the base of the mandrel. 

The mandrel is positioned above an installation point and pushed to the required depth. On reaching the agreed actual depth of the drains, the operation is reversed and the mandrel is withdrawn from the Drain. The anchor plate locks itself at the driven depth such that the drain is fixed as the mandrel rises.

The vertical drain installation equipment can be fitted with a CeTeau drain logger developed to monitor and control the installation of prefabricated vertical drains. The drain logger can register the following information.

‣ Installation date Installation time 
‣ Maximum installation force
‣ Installation depth
‣ Total number of drains installed
‣ Total quantity of drain installed
‣ Depth warning

The system is USB based, so the stored data can be easily transferred from the data logger to any PC and converted in an Excel file showing listed data and a graphic display of the soil resistance for every drain.