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A study of bearing capacity and compressibility characteristics of cohesive soil, reinforced by geogrid and supporting square footing loads has been conducted. The lack of adequate frictional resistance between clay and reinforcing elements was compensated by using a thin sand layer (lens) encapsulating the geogrid sheet. In this way, tensile forces induced in the geogrid were transferred to the bulk clay medium through the sand particles and soil reinforcement was improved Experiments were conduced on two sets of specimens, one set of 1 x 1 x 1 m dimension and the footing size of 19 x 19 cm (series A), and the other set of 0.15 x 0.15 x 0.15 m dimension and the footing size of 3.7 x 3.7 cm (series B). The loading systems for the above specimens were stress controlled and strain controlled respectively. All specimens were saturated and presumably loaded under an undrained condition. The results qualitatively confirmed the effectiveness of the sand lens in improving the bearing capacity and settlement characteristics of the model footing. In series A, the maximum increase in the bearing capacity due to the presence of the sand lens was 17% whereas in series B, the amount of increase was 24%. The percentage reductions in the settlement for these results were 30% and 46% respectively.

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In the current study, an effort is made to determine three dimensional bearing capacity of rectangular foundations using Discrete

Element Method. The soil mass is modeled as discrete blocks connected with Winkler springs. Different factors affect the geometry

of failure surface. Six independent angles are used to define the failure surface. By trial and error, the optimum shape of failure

surface beneath the foundation can be found. The paper includes the derivation of the governing equations for this DEM based

formulation in three dimensional state as well as parametric sensitivity analyses and comparison with other methods. Moreover,

using the current method, bearing capacity coefficients are presented for various friction angles and foundation aspect ratios.

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The results of laboratory model tests and numerical analysis on circular footings supported on sand bed under incremental

cyclic loads are presented. The incremental values of intensity of cyclic loads (loading, unloading and reloading) were applied

on the footing to evaluate the response of footing and also to obtain the value of elastic rebound of the footing corresponding

to each cycle of load. The effect of sand relative density of 42%, 62%, and 72% and different circular footing area of 25, 50,

and 100cm2 were investigated on the value of coefficient of elastic uniform compression of sand (CEUC). The results show that

the value of coefficient of elastic uniform compression of sand was increased by increasing the sand relative density while with

increase the footing area the value of coefficient of elastic uniform compression of sand was decreases. The responses of footing

and the quantitative variations of CEUC with footing area and soil relative density obtained from experimental results show a

good consistency with the obtained numerical result using “FLAC-3D”.

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This paper describes a series of laboratory model tests on strip footings supported on unreinforced and geogrid-reinforced sand
with an inside void. The footing is subjected to a combination of static and cyclic loading. The influence of various parameters
including the embedment depth of the void, the number of reinforcement layers, and the amplitude of cyclic load were studied.
The results show that the footing settlement due to repeated loading increased when the void existed in the failure zone of the
footing and decreased with increasing the void vertical distance from the footing bottom and with increasing the reinforcement
layers beneath the footing. For a specified amplitude of repeated load, the footing settlement is comparable for reinforced sand,
thicker soil layer over the void and much improved the settlement of unreinforced sand without void. In general, the results
indicate that, the reinforced soil-footing system with sufficient geogride-reinforcement and void embedment depth behaves much
stiffer and thus carries greater loading with lower settlement compared with unreinforced soil in the absent of void and can
eliminate the adverse effect of the void on the footing behavior. The final footing settlement under repeated cyclic loading becomes
about 4 times with respect to the footing settlement under static loading at the same magnitude of load applied.

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This research examines the behavior of soil-reinforced piles and applied loads based on the analytical method and by using the numerical results of FLAC3D software for comparison with the analytical results. The analysis was based on a method called virtual retaining wall, the following into consideration: an imaginary retaining wall that passes the footing edge the bearing capacity of footing on reinforced soil with piles, which was determined by applying equilibrium between active and passive forces on virtual wall and a pile row that exists beneath the shallow foundation. To calculate the lateral pile resistance here, an analytical equation was then required. The main objective of this paper is to determine the percentage of applied load on pile. Similarly, the effect of adding pile in various positions relative to the present footing (underpinning) was studied in this research. The various parameters of this study included pile length, vertical distance of pile head to shallow footing, pile distance to center of footing and location of the pile. Finally, the findings were compared with the numerical results of FLAC3D and the formerly presented experimental results. Results show that the analytical method, while being close to other methods is more conservative.

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A study has been conducted on the bearing capacity of strip footings over sandy layered soils using the stress characteristic lines method. Traditional bearing capacity theories for specifying the ultimate bearing capacity of shallow foundations are based on the idea that the bearing layer is homogenous and infinite. However layered soils are mainly happening in practice. The stress characteristic lines method is a powerful numerical tool in order to solve stability problems in geotechnical engineering. In the present paper, an appropriate algorithm is derived for estimating the static bearing capacity of strip footing located on two layered soils using the stress characteristic lines method. Some numerical and experimental examples are presented in order to validate the proposed algorithm. Some graphs and equation are presented for initial estimating the effective depth of strip footings located on two layered soils.