Authors:
Anand Shrigondekar; Prabhuling Ullagaddi;
Abstract:
This research attempted to contemplate the conduct of experiments on reinforced sand in enhancing the bearing capacity of a square footing. Locally available river sand along with geogrid as a reinforcement material were utilized. The experiments were completed in an M.S. tank of size 0.75m x 0.75m x 0.75m. A plate vibrator was used to compact the soil and the vertical load was applied using a hydraulic cylinder of 50 kN capacity. In this study, a total of 104 tests were performed on a square footing with central load as well as for eccentric loading. The parameters considered in the exploratory investigation include the effect of the uppermost layer of geosynthetic on the load-carrying capacity of a footing, the number of layers of reinforcement sheets, eccentricity of loading and vertical spacing between successive layers. The experimental reading indicates that for a given geogrid-strengthened sand, the topmost layer of the geogrid was at 0.25 times the footing breadth from the base of the footing to achieve maximum load capacity, while the optimum spacing between successive
geogrid layers was also found as 0.25 times the width of footing. It was confirmed that the Bearing Capacity Factor (BCF) reaches its highest value when 4 layers of geogrid are used in the soil and the load-carrying capacity of the footing is reduced by 20% to 40% when a load is applied at kern boundary.
Keywords:
Load intensity, Axial load, Eccentric load, Geogrid reinforced soil, Square footing, Unreinforced soil.