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Experimental and Numerical Study of Bearing Capacity and Effect of Specimen Size on Uniform Sand with Medium Density, Reinforced with Nonwoven Geotextile

  • Research Article - Civil Engineering
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Abstract

Reinforced soil is a composite material in which elements of high tensile resistance are implemented to increase the tensile resistance of the soil. Geotextiles are one of the major groups of geosynthetic products that are used for soil reinforcement. This paper deals with the effects of using nonwoven geotextile to improve the ultimate bearing capacity of footings resting on sand with medium density. The plate load tests were performed using 27 cm × 27 cm and 35 cm × 35 cm square plates, and the effects of the depth of the first layer of geotextile, vertical spacing as well as the number of geotextile layers on the ultimate bearing capacity of the footings were studied. Moreover, the impact of plate size and sample size was examined numerically by performing 3-D finite element analyses with different sizes of the square plate. The experimental results showed that the maximum bearing capacity is achieved for the system with four geotextile layers, vertical spacing of 0.3B between geotextile layers and geotextile width of 4B, where B is the width of the plate. The numerical analyses indicated that with increasing the size of the plate up to 65 cm, the values of the bearing capacity ratio (BCR) gradually decrease; however, additional increase in the size of the plate has a little impact on BCR values.

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Abbreviations

U/B:

Ratio of the depth of the first layer of geotextile to the width of the plate

W/B:

Ratio of the width of geotextile to the width of the plate

X/B:

Ratio of the vertical spacing between geotextile layers to the width of the plate

N:

Number of geotextile layers

F/B:

Ratio of the width of the box to the width of the plate

BCR:

Ratio of bearing capacity of reinforced soil to unreinforced soil

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Noshirvani University of Technology, P.O.Box 484, Babol, Iran

    Yashar Tavangar & Issa Shooshpasha

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  1. Yashar Tavangar
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  2. Issa Shooshpasha
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Correspondence to Yashar Tavangar.

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Tavangar, Y., Shooshpasha, I. Experimental and Numerical Study of Bearing Capacity and Effect of Specimen Size on Uniform Sand with Medium Density, Reinforced with Nonwoven Geotextile. Arab J Sci Eng 41, 4127–4137 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-016-2101-y

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