BEARING CAPACITY OF SOIL BAGS ON SOFT GROUND REINFORCED BY BAMBOO PILE

North Maluku is one of the archipelago provinces in Indonesia. As reported by the Ministry of Public Works, this province has more than three thousand kilometers of coastline indicated to erosion [1]. The infrastructures and residences along coastal area have been frequently attacked by big waves. To protect the coastal aforementioned from the risk of natural disaster, the local government must construct a robust coastal bank. However, the bearing capacity of the soft ground is very weak for working as a bank. The procedure of the bank construction includes: preparing the construction area, installing bamboo piles, laying geo-bamboo on the piles, placing sandbags as the mattress and constructing selected materials. To make a reasonable way for the design of foundation soil using traditional reinforcement system for a coastal bank, an empirical calculation based on the rule of geotechnics has been discussed. The field CBR method was studied by conducting the full scale of model soil bags on very soft soil reinforced bamboo pile. Finally, the bearing capacity results of foundation soil were compared to the field CBR test for several properties of very soft soil, dimensions of soil bags and bamboo piles.