328 Proceedings of the 4th Asian Regional Conference on Geosynthetics

June 17 - 20, 2008 Shanghai, China

BEARING CAPACITY OF RING FOOTINGS ON REINFORCED CLAY

A. H. Boushehrian1 and N. Hataf2

ABSTRACT: One of the common methods for soil improvement in order to increase the bearing capacity of shallow
foundations is reinforcing the soil using geosynthetics. In this paper, the bearing capacity of ring footings on clay
reinforced with geogrid has been studied. Laboratory and numerical investigation using the finite element computer
code, Plaxis have been performed. The effects of different factors such as the distance to the first layer of reinforcement,
vertical distances between layers, and the number of reinforcing layers, the optimum depth of the reinforcement and the
stiffness of the reinforcements on the increase of the bearing capacity ratio, of circular and ring foundation have been
examined.

KEYWORDS: bearing capacity, reinforced soil, ring footing

INTRODUCTION in the BCR between 1 and 0.5, for the ratios of u to B.

One of the appropriate methods to prevent soft soil
failure or excessive settlements under loads, is
reinforcing the soil with polymeric reinforcements such
as geogrids, geotextiles, geonets, etc. The bearing
capacity of shallow foundations besides the parameters
and conditions of the soil below the foundation depends
on the shape of the foundation. Ring footings are usually
used for symmetrical buildings like silos, chimneys, and
oil storages upon which much study has been done. This
study presents a series of laboratory and numerical
studies results on the behavior of ring and circular
footings placed on the clay reinforced with geogrids.
BEHAVIOUR OF FOOTINGS ON THE
REINFORCED SOIL
The bearing capacity ratio of the reinforced soil to
non-reinforced soil (BCR) is defined to assess the
increase of the bearing capacity. If the reinforcements
are placed in suitable distance from the foundation
bottom, the BCR will be more than 1.0. Binquet and Lee
(1975) used a box with the dimensions of 1.5 m (length)
× 0.53 m (width) × 0.33 m(depth), and a strip footing
with the width of 7.5 cm in his experiments. Aluminum
strips were used in these experiments as reinforcement
elements. Akinmusuru and Akinboladeh (1981) experi-
mented on square footings with the width of 10 cm, and
woven strip reinforcements. They observed an increase
The optimum number of the reinforcements was 3.
Hataf and Bazyar (2000) observed noticeable
increases in the bearing capacities of the reinforced soils,
using square footings with the width of 14 cm and tire
shred as the reinforcement. They reported the critical
rates of z B and u B , 0.46 and 0.315. Hataf and
Boushehrian (2003) did study the optimum amounts of
the depth of one layer of reinforcement and the distances
between the multi layers reinforcements in the sandy soil
beneath the ring and circular footings experimentally and
numerically.
Improving the bearing capacity and the features
related to the settlement of clay using horizontal
reinforcements has also been studied by Ingoled and
Miller (1982), Das (1987), Mandal and Sah (1992).
As mentioned above, several parametric studies have
been done on reinforced soils so far, though not much
information of the studies on ring footings or on
reinforced soils has been reported.
MATERIAL PROPERTIES
The grain-size distribution curve of the tested clay
soil is presented in Fig. 1. The soil was classified as clay
with low plasticity (CL) using the unified soil
classification system. Other features of the soil are
shown in Table 1. The internal friction angle and the soil
cohesion were obtained from the undrained triaxial test
with no saturation of the sample. The used reinforcement

1
Graduate Student, Civil Engineering Dept., Shiraz University, Shiraz, IRAN. Email:hajianib@shirazu.ac.ir
2
Professor, Civil Engineering Dept., Shiraz University, Shiraz, IRAN. Email:nhataf@shirazu.ac.ir
 329

was the uniaxial polyethylene geogrid. The tensile EXPERIMENTATION PROGRAM

strength of the geogrid was 8 kN/m. The size of the
openings of the geogrid was 2.7 mm × 2.7 mm, and its Tables 2 and 3 indicate the program of the research
thickness was 5 mm. experiments. In this table, Rl indicates the ring footing
on the non-reinforced soil. Rl_x_y indicates the ring
footing on the clay with x reinforcement layers in test
100 number y. Cl indicates the circular footing on the non-
90 Seive Analysis reinforced soil. Rl_x_y indicates the circular footing on
80
Percent Finer(%) the clay with x reinforcement layers in test number y.
70
60
50 Table 2 Conditions tested in laboratory model tests
40
(Ring footing)
30
20
10
Test No. U(cm) Z(cm)
0
10 1 0.1 0.01 0.001
Rl ---- ----
Grain Diameter(mm) Rl-1-1 3.5 ----

Fig. 1 The grain-size distribution curve of the tested clay Rl-1-2 5 ----
Rl-1-3 10 ----
Table 1 Engineering properties of clays used in model tests Rl-1-4 30 ----
Rl-2-1 3.5 4
Parameter Clay Rl-2-2 3.5 5
Rl-3-1 3.5 4
Maximum densitykN/m3 16 kN/m3
Rl-3-2 3.5 5
Undrained cohesionkN/m2 4.5(kN/m2) Rl-4-1 3.5 4
Internal friction angle 26 o
Rl-4-2 3.5 5

Table 3 Conditions tested in laboratory model tests

LABORATORY TESTS
(Circular footing)
The cylindrical tank of the tests was made of steel Test No. U(cm) Z(cm)
with the diameter/ height of 1 meter and thickness of 4 Cl ---- ----
mm. The load was applied to the foundations using the Cl-1-1 3.5 ----
system of a simple lever. The foundations were also Cl-1-2 5 ----
metal and steel with the thickness of 70 mm, the internal
Cl-1-3 10 ----
diameter of 60 mm, and the external diameter of 150 mm.
The numerical results showed the highest quantity of Cl-1-4 30 ----
BCR with the ratio of the internal diameter to the Cl-2-1 3.5 3
external diameter equalLQJ to 0.4. Cl-2-2 3.5 4.5
Cl-3-1 3.5 3
Cl-3-2 3.5 4.5
TEST PROCEDURE Cl-4-1 3.5 3
Cl-4-2 3.5 4.5
For each test, first the tank was filled with 50-
millimeter layers of soil. In order to gain a uniform
compaction for each layer, a wooden plate was thrown
down on the surface of the soil 15 times from the height LABORATORY RESULTS
of 200 mm, this contributed to a relative density between
Load-deformation curves were drawn upon each loading.
1.55 and 1.6 gr/cm3 in the soil. A gauge was used to
The bearing capacity, considering the nature of the
measure the caused displacement in different spots of the
failure, was defined using the tangent method by
foundation. drawing two tangents (one on the first part and the other