Effect of reinforcement density on the behaviour of reinforced sand under a square footing

Abstract EN

In this study, the behaviour of reinforced sand under a square footing has been investigated.

A series of bearing capacity tests were performed on a small-scale laboratory model, filled with a poorly-graded homogenous bed of sand, which was placed in a medium dense state using sand raining technique.

The sand was reinforced with 40 mm wide household Aluminium foil strips.

The aim was to study the load-settlement behaviour, bearing capacity ratio and settlement reduction factor, considering the effect of reinforcing strip length, with various linear density of reinforcement, number of reinforcement layers and depth of top layer of reinforcement below the footing.

Generally the relation of load-settlement showed similar trend in all the tests.

The failure was defined as the settlement equal to 10% of the footing width.

The recommended optimum reinforcing strip length, linear density of reinforcement, number of reinforcement layers and depth of top layer of reinforcing strips, that give the maximum bearing capacity improvement and minimum settlement reduction factor were presented and discussed.

Both bearing capacity and settlement reduction factor versus length of the reinforcing strips relation at failure have showed an improvement of the bearing capacity ratio by a factor of 3.82 and a reduction of the settlement reduction factor by a factor of 0.813.

The optimum length of the reinforcement was found to be 7.5 times the footing width