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New interpretation of creep behavior of sand with load tests on spread footings

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Abstract

In order to study the long-term behavior of spread footings with support from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), a load test was performed on five spread footings more than 20 years ago at the National Geotechnical Experimental Site (NGES). The creep behavior was not well understood at that time, and the prediction of long-term settlement by a power law model with an abnormally wide range of the creep exponent “n value” was unacceptable. Thus, the load test was revisited, and the data was restudied. It was found that the original data is complicated by three factors: (i) reference wood beam creep under self-weight; (ii) uneven duration of sustained load from the suggested loading protocol; (iii) cycle planned in the loading protocol. The study shows that the n value is fairly constant, excluding the impacted n value. A separate load test was performed to demonstrate the impact of uneven duration and cycle on the n value. The long-term settlement of spread footings was predicted with the corrected n value. Several creep curves under different service loads were drawn, with results reliable and acceptable for engineering practice.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on a reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the partial funding provided by the Texas Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, the Spencer J. Buchanan Chair, Natural Science Foundation of China (41877244, 41702315), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian, China (2020J05068), and The Major Science and Technology Special Plan of Yunnan Province Science and Technology Department (202002AF080003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geo-Engineering Investigation Institute of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing, 211102, Jiangsu, China

    Tingqing Qian

  2. College of Transportation Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, Jiangsu, China

    Gang Bi, Shaohua Yang, Hongzhong Xu & Yijie Sun

  3. Faculty of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, Yunnan, China

    Yonghong Wu

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  1. Tingqing Qian
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  2. Gang Bi
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  4. Hongzhong Xu
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Correspondence to Gang Bi.

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Responsible Editor: Zeynal Abiddin Erguler

Gang Bi is formerly affiliated with the Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

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Qian, T., Bi, G., Yang, S. et al. New interpretation of creep behavior of sand with load tests on spread footings. Arab J Geosci 15, 1700 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-11011-7

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