Numerical Study of Behavior of Circular Footing on Geogrid-Reinforced Sand Under Static and Dynamic Loading

A series of axi-symmetry models using finite element analyses were performed to investigate the behavior of circular footings over reinforced sand under static and dynamic loading. Geogrid was modeled as an elastic element and the soil was modeled using hardening soil model which use an elasto-plastic hyperbolic stress–strain relation. Several parameters including number of geogrid layers, depth to the first geogrid layer, spacing between layers and load amplitude of dynamic loading are selected in this paper to investigate the influence of these parameters on the performance of reinforced systems under both static and dynamic loads. The numerical studies demonstrated that the presence of geogrid in sand makes the relationship between contact pressure and settlement of reinforced system nearly linear until reaching the failure stage. The rate of footing settlement decreases as the number of loading cycles increases and the optimum values of the depth of first geogrid layer and spacing between layers is found 20% of the footing diameter. Some significant observations on the performance of footing-geogrid systems with change of the values of parametric study are presented in this paper.