Bearing capacity of strip footing resting on fibre-reinforced pond ash overlying soft clay

The use of the industrial hazardous waste like pond ash to strengthen the soft clay (weak soil) is also helpful in solving the land requirement problem for its deposition. In the present study, the results of an investigation carried out on double-layer soil system have been presented. The model tests have been conducted with a strip footing resting on soil system which contains unreinforced and randomly distributed fibre-reinforced pond ash (RDFP) layer over soft clay. The effect of the pond ash layer thickness (i.e. 0.5B, 1.0B and 1.5B) compacted at optimum moisture content, the fibre length (6mm, 12mm and 18mm) and the percentage of fibres in RDFP layer, i.e. 0.5%, 0.75% and 1.0% have been studied. The results have indicated that the provision of compacted pond ash layer and the addition of fibres into pond ash significantly influence the ultimate bearing capacity. The results in the form of bearing pressure ratio (BPR) have shown that the improvement with 1.5B thickness of RDFP and 1% of fibre inclusions is maximum. The validation of results has also been done using a finite element tool PLAXIS 3D.