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Abstract Soft clay soils are widely spread in most parts of the world and locally exist in Northern Egypt and delta as a result of Nile sedimentation. Soft clay soils are known to experience low values of bearing capacity, and large settlements that occur for long periods due to its low shear strength and high compressibility. Due to large demand of land development and construction challenges, the need to deal with such type of weak soil has become essential. To overcome the expected problems which can be resulted from construction on such type of soil, we can either improve these soils or go for deep foundation. Soil improvement techniques may be of less cost compared with using deep foundations. Among diversed soil improvement techniques, the deep mixing method is considered as one of the most popular technique due to its applicability for use in many types of soils, speedy execution and resulted high ground strength. This technique improves the mechanical and physical properties of native soil, which is mixed with stabilizing agent( e.g. cement or lime) to form treated soil columns. The resulting stabilized soil generally is distinguished by higher strength, less permeability, and less compressibility than the native soil. Several researchers have studied the deep mixing technique as an alternative technique to improve the bearing capacity and settlement performance of model footings under different loading conditions. However, a few researchers have taken the approach of carrying out a small-scale equipment with same working principle of deep mixing column installing machine in field to ensure both drilling and injection of cement grout similar to in situ conditions. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to study the behavior of strip footing resting on soft clay soil improved by single and group of (DCM) -iicolumns through an experimental equipment designed in laboratory to simulate the field deep soil mixing conditions for installing (DCM) columns. The obtained results are used to evaluate the bearing capacity and settlement behavior of the strip footing due to (DCM) columns existence. Moreover, a finite element analysis was performed using PLAXIS 3D (Version 2013) to clarify and confirm the model test results. |