## 1 Introduction  
Researchers have been searching for previously undiscovered methods of soft soil which, until recently, have been regarded as too costly to develop due to urban and metropolitan regions' infrastructure and economic advancements, as well as large increases in land values. Soft soil is typically spread across large regions and has a low carrying capacity, excessive compressibility, insufficient strength, and low permeability [1, 2]. Compaction piles, replacement type, displacement type, prefabricated vertical drains, vacuum pre-consolidation, and soil reinforcement are some tactics that can be used to strengthen compressive soils [2].  
Soil reinforcement using stone columns and geosynthetics has been widely used as an important method of soil reinforcement. There have been a wide number of studies based on analytical [3, 4, 5, 6, 7], experimental [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23], and numerical [7, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27] analyses on soil reinforcement. There are also various state-of-the-art studies which signify the need for such types of analyses [28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36]. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [37] conducted a set of investigations and experiments to analyse the characteristics of single stone columns in groups. The authors experimented with characteristics such as stone column spacing, softer clay shear strength, and loading conditions for the soft clays, along with varying undrained shear strengths. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [13] also performed various tests on single and grouped stone columns that were encased in various geosynthetics with and without encasement. The useful influence of this encasement on the VESCs' bearing capacity was confirmed through load testing. [PERSON] et al. [38] conducted a set of studies on tanks with weaker soft clay and covered a somewhat strong and effective silty type of soil of varying thicknesses over the top layer to explore the behaviour of columns of stone in the layered soils. Along with the vertical encasement, another option of reinforcing the stone column is to use the help of horizontal geosynthetic layers [21; 39]. A comparison has also been performed between vertically and horizontally encased stone columns [40; 41; 42; 43].  
The lateral stresses created due to the poor soil serve to limit stone columns. The lateral tension exerted from the nearby area containing softer soil determines the efficacy of the weight that is supported by stone columns. In particularly softer soils, extra confinement is required, which can be attained by enclosing the column of stones in geosynthetics [20]. Even in very soft soil, this encasement enhances the carrying capacity and rigidity and lowers the lateral swelling for the columns of stones.  
In this research, the results of a set of tests using large-body experimental loading on solitary stone columns of different diameters are described. Testing on ordinary stone columns (OSCs), vertically encased stone columns (VESCs), and horizontally reinforced stone columns (HRSCs) was conducted to evaluate the effect of the reinforcement type and different reinforcement materials (two types of geosynthetics were used) on the soil's response. The major goal of the current study is to perform a comparison on the efficacy of VESCs and HRSCs in soft soil for various stone column diameters under the same conditions.