Effect of Full Wrap-Around Ends of Geotextile on the Bearing Capacity of Sand

Abstract

This paper presented the results of numerical model tests on the load-settlement of a strip footing on reinforced sand bed to investigate the effect of a new practical reinforcement technique using geosynthetic reinforcement to increase the load bearing capacity of shallow foundations on a sandy soil. In all previous works, the soil reinforcement method consisted of single or multiple horizontal layer(s) placed horizontally below the footing. This paper aimed to present the details of numerical analysis of strip footing resting on a reinforced sand bed with horizontal layers and two horizontal layers with full wrap-around ends of geotextile to increase the capacity of shallow foundations. Order to show more clearly the performance of the full wraparound ends of reinforcement compared to that of reinforcement placed horizontally, the effect of depth of geotextile on the increase of the bearing capacity was investigated.The results indicate that the two full wrap-around ends of the geosynthetic allowed a significant improvement in bearing capacity and space savings for building a reinforced sand bed and the proposed full wrap-around ends need less quantity of geotextile than planar geotextile placed horizontally.