Effect of the Geotextile Arrangement on the Bearing Capacity of a Strip Footing

A series of laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the effect of the three-dimensional arrangement of geotextile strips on the load-bearing capacity of a strip foundation on sand reinforced by geotextile strips. The load-bearing capacity of a 24.5 x 7.5 x 1.5 cm strip foundation on a 90 x 25 x 30 cm sandbox reinforced with three different types of geotextiles in seven different forms of three-dimensional arrangement was studied. Geotextile arrangements consisted of one, two, and three layers of continuous strips with 1 cm vertical spacing, two and three strips of 5 cm wide reinforcements in 5 cm horizontal intervals beneath each other in the vertical plane, and 5 cm shifted in the horizontal plane. The results indicate that the improvement of the bearing capacity of the foundation on reinforced soil per unit width of the reinforcements is the maximum for one-layer continuous reinforcement. The bearing capability of the footing per unit width of the reinforcements decreases by increasing the number of reinforcements layers. For multi-layer reinforced models, using reinforcement strips in interval arrangements increases the effectiveness of the geotextile on the improvement of the bearing capacity of the footing. Using a proper three-dimensional arrangement of reinforcement strips results in a similar ultimate bearing capacity with approximately 50% less reinforcement when compared to continuous multi-layer reinforcement arrangement.