Bearing Capacity of Strip Footings Near Reinforced Sand Slopes

Abstract

There are many situations where footings are located on or near sloping fills. When a footing is constructed on or near a slope, the bearing capacity of the footing is significantly reduced compared with the same footing resting on horizontal ground surface. Bearing capacity of strip footings near sand slopes attracts the attention of many researchers all over the world. To shed some lights on this problem, fifty four loading tests were conducted on a strip footing model of width 50 mm. The bearing capacity of a strip footing near both unreinforced sand slope and reinforced sand slope was compared. The study indicated that the improvement of the bearing capacity of a strip footing resting near a reinforced sand slope depends upon the embedment depth of the reinforcing layer, and the edge distance of the footing from the slope crest. Moreover, the relative density of the sand has insignificant effect on the improvement performance. The optimum depth ratio of geotextile reinforcement varies from 0.25 to 1.00 times the footing width depending upon the edge distance of the footing. Strip footings at edge distance greater than the footing width from the crest of a reinforced sand slope behave as strip footings on horizontal ground surface. A comparison between the achieved experimental bearing capacity of a strip footing near an unreinforced sand slope and the calculated values from published closed-form solutions was carried out. The study revealed that Meyerhof method underestimates the bearing capacity interpreted at settlement ratio 2.5% from the footing width by a factor of 0.60. While the methods of Gemperline and Graham et al. overestimate the bearing capacity by 14% and 3% respectively. Finally, the paper presents the values of bearing capacity factor for a strip footing near a reinforced sand slope.
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