Behaviour of strip footing resting on encapsulated soil mass: a numerical study

The present study aims at providing design guideline for surface strip footing resting on soil mass encapsulated with geosynthetic reinforcement. The guideline has been provided based on extensive finite element based numerical analysis conducted on loose, medium dense and dense sandy soil. The width of the strip footing (B) and the distance between bottom of the footing and top horizontal reinforcement layer (u) have been kept constant in the analysis. However, the distance between two horizontal reinforcement layers (h) and length of the encapsulated reinforcement layer (l) have been varied to understand the effect of influencing parameters on the pressure-settlement behaviour of reinforced soil mass. Based on the maximum normalized bearing pressure, the optimum reinforcement configuration has been found at l/B=2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$l/B=2$$\end{document} and h/B=0.6\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$h/B=0.6$$\end{document}. A multiple linear regression equation based on numerical analysis data has been developed to evaluate the normalized bearing pressure of reinforced soil mass at different settlement ratio of footing. The developed equation has also been compared with the published literature related to experimental investigations and numerical studies. The statistical analysis of model test data reveal that the magnitude of normalized bearing pressure depends primarily on angle of internal friction of soil mass and settlement ratio of the strip footing.