Eccentrical behavior of square and circular footings resting on geogrid-reinforced sand

A simple approach to describe the centrically and eccentrically ultimate bearing capacity of circular and square footings resting on geogrid-reinforced sand is developed in this paper. To establish and evaluate this approach, a series experimental test for circular footing and square footing were considered as shallow foundation models. The proposed approach for eccentrical loading in unreinforced and reinforced conditions has been validated with Meyerhof's Effective Width Concept, laboratory model tests, numerical analyses data and field tests on actual full scale reported in the literature review. It was revealed that the new method provides reasonable agreement of the ultimate bearing capacity. Also, the results show ultimate bearing capacity of circular footing decreases less with increment of load eccentricity in comparison of square footing in reinforced condition. Improvement Index investigated that reinforcement layers increased the ultimate bearing capacity in both loadings and their contributions increased with increasing the load eccentricity.