Modeling of the cyclic behavior of shallow foundations resting on geomesh and grid-anchor reinforced sand: Fid-Bau Portal

Modeling of the cyclic behavior of shallow foundations resting on geomesh and grid-anchor reinforced sand

Boushehrian, A.H. / Hataf, N. / Ghahramani, A.

Storage tank foundations with frequent discharges and filling or road embankments under repeated traffic loads are examples of foundations subjected to the cyclic loading with the amplitude well below their allowable bearing capacity. The concern exists for the amount of uniform and non-uniform settlement of such structures. The soil under such foundations may be reinforced with geosynthetics to improve their engineering properties. This paper deals with the effects of using the new generation of reinforcement, grid-anchor, for the purpose of reducing the permanent settlement of these foundations under the influence of proportion of the ultimate load. Unloading-reloading field tests were performed to investigate the behaviour of a square footing on sand reinforced with this system. The effects of footing size and reinforcement types on the cyclic behaviour of the reinforced sand were studied experimentally and numerically. The large-scale results show that by using the grid-anchors, the amount of permanent settlement decreases to 30%, as compared with the unreinforced condition. Furthermore, the number of loading cycles reaching the constant dimensionless settlement value decreases to 31%, compared with the unreinforced condition. Another goal of this paper is to present the equations for reinforced soil under cyclic loading. According to these equations, calculation of the permanent settlement and the number of load cycles to reach this amount for each foundation with a given size on the geomesh and grid-anchor reinforced sand, without further need to carry out the large-scale test, can be performed easily.