The Menard Vacuum™ Consolidation method is a proprietary system used for preloading and consolidating soft and very soft saturated impervious soils. The procedure consists of installing vertical and horizontal vacuum transmission pipes under an airtight impervious membrane and evacuating the air below the membrane thus imposing an atmospheric pressure on the soil.

This loading process creates an accelerated isotropic consolidation in the soil mass in a relatively short time thereby eliminating the need for long-term and potentially unstable surcharge loads.

Advantages :

- Significant time savings over other consolidation methods
- Loading and construction can proceed as early as two weeks after process has started
- Isotropic consolidation eliminates the risk of failure under additional loading of the permanent construction
- No risk of slope instability beyond boundaries
- Controlled rate and magnitude of loading and settlement

Kimhae and Yangyoo sewerage treatment plants

In South Korea, Menard Vacuum combined with surcharge and Dynamic Compaction has been successfully used to allow the construction of the Kimhae Sewage Treatment plant on 25 to 43 m of highly compressible clay.
The Sewage Treatment Plant of Kimhae is now in full operation and no residual settlement has been recorded to-date which attests to the efficiency of the method.
Further to the success of the construction of this plant, the city of Kimhae has awarded to Menard the soil improvement of the sewage treatment plant of Jangyoo, located next to the previous treatment plant. Soil improvement works are now in progress, with 60,000 m2 of compressible clay up to 40 m deep subject to vacuum consolidation. Settlements so far range between 3 to more than 6 m.