Bearing Capacity of Strip Footing on Reinforced Foundation Bed over Soft Ground with Granular Trench

The paper presents a method for the estimation of bearing capacity of a strip footing resting on a reinforced foundation bed over soft ground stabilized with a granular trench. Meyerhof’s two-layered punching failure mechanism along with Madhav and Vitkar’s solution for bearing capacity of granular trench supported footing resting on soft ground, form the basis of the analysis. The bearing capacity of a strip footing in a two-layered system of reinforced granular fill overlying soft ground stabilized with granular trench is estimated by incorporating the contribution from the axial tension mobilized in the reinforcement to those from the granular fill and the stabilized soft ground. A parametric study quantifies the effect of various parameters on the degree of bearing capacity improvement. The predictions are compared with experimental studies available in literature. The percentage improvement in the bearing capacity of the strip footing due to reinforcement of the soft ground with a granular trench coupled with unreinforced and reinforced granular fill is established through the comparisons. © 2014, Indian Geotechnical Society.