Performance of Loosely Skirted Shallow Foundation Resting on Reinforced Sand Under Vertical Loading

Various techniques of confinement and reinforcement on cohesionless soil under the footing are proved to have beneficial effect. The present study investigates the behavior of loosely skirted shallow foundation resting on multilayered geogrid reinforced medium dense sand under vertical loading through a series of laboratory model tests. The experimental model tests were conducted on surface footing, footing with skirt, footing with horizontal reinforcements and footing with skirt and horizontal reinforcement configurations subjected to vertical loading. The effect of various parameters such as depth of skirt, number of geogrid layers, spacing between horizontal reinforcements have been investigated. The experimental results have been compared with the results obtained from PLAXIS-3D software. The results indicated that combination of both skirts and horizontal reinforcements have shown optimum improvement in load bearing capacity of footing than other configurations. Effect of loose skirt with and without reinforcements has also been assessed, even while comparing the economic aspects, geogrid skirts prove to be a viable alternative to the conventional skirts. However, it can be inferred that the bearing capacity obtained from the model studies are in good agreement with the numerical results.