Published Paper Details:

The geosynthetic reinforced foundation soils are being used to support footings of many structures including ware houses, oil drilling platforms, bridge abutments, platforms of heavy industrial equipment etc. In usual construction practice, one or more layers of geosynthetic (geotextile, geogrid, geocell or geocomposites) are placed inside a controlled granular fill beneath the footings. Such reinforced foundation soils provide improved load bearing capacity and reduced settlements by distributing the imposed loads over a wider area of weak subsoil. In the conventional construction technique, without any use of reinforcement, a thick granular layer is needed which may be costly or may not be possible, especially in sites of limited availability of good quality granular materials. In general the improved performance of a geosynthetic reinforced foundation soil can be attributed to an increase in shear strength of the foundation soil from the inclusion of the geosynthetic layers. The soil-geosynthetic system forms a composite material that prevents development of the soil failure wedge beneath shallow spread footings. In order to observe physically the behavior of prestressed reinforced granular beds overlying weak soil, extensive experimental investigations are carried out. A series of laboratory scale model tests are carried out on square footings resting on unreinforced granular bed (GB), reinforced granular bed (RGB) and prestressed reinforce granular bed (PRGB). The details of experimental setup, test methodology, material used and parameters studied are explained.