Geosynthetic materials such as geogrid or geotextile are often used to compose a reinforced earth to improve the engineering properties of weak soils. These materials provide extra tensile resistance by interaction with surrounding soils. The geosynthetic materials have long been used to reinforce earth slopes, but relatively little study have been performed on their usage for the reinforcement of shallow foundation. In order to provide practice engineers with parameters to optimize their design, the effectiveness of reinforced shallow foundation was studied numerically by using a commercial finite difference program -Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua (FLAC). The bearing capacity of an unreinforced strip foundation was simulated and compared with Terzaghi's theoretical solution to verify the correctness of the numerical model. The effects of various parameters, such as the burial depth, length of the reinforcement material, number of reinforcement layers, arrangement of reinforcement layers, and the strength of soil on the bearing capacity were then studied. Results of this study verify that the reinforced shallow foundation can provide higher bearing capacity, especially for weak soils. It was found that a buried depth of 0.4 times the width of foundation yields the optimum bearing capacity increase. The most economical reinforcement length is about 2 to 3 times the width of the foundation. Adding an additional layer of reinforcement was found to further increase the bearing capacity.
64Innovative and Sustainable Use of Geomaterials and Geosystems GSP 245
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