DEFORMATION BEHAVIOUR OF STRIP FOOTING ON REINFORCED SOIL USING PLAXIS 2D

Foundations are the most important part of the structure to transfer loads to the soil. Weak and soft soils pose problems to the stability of foundations in particular and overall structures in general. There are numerous techniques to stabilize such soils. The technique of reinforcing soil is a recently developed in which overall stability of the soil can be improved. Reinforced soil is a composite construction material composed of soil fill strengthened by inclusion of tensile reinforcements. The increased stability is through frictional interaction between the soil and reinforcement. This results in the reinforced soil structure acting as a coherent gravity mass. Because of its economy, ease in construction and adaptability to most of the soil structures, this technique is replacing the other conventional ground improvement methods. One of the potential fields of application where reinforced soil can prove to be effective is in the improvement of the bearing capacity of the weak soils. Another problem associated with foundation on the weak and soft soils is that of settlement. In this study, the shallow footing is modelled on reinforced and unreinforced soils (black cotton soil and red soil) using Plaxis-2D software. The displacement of the footing is observed and compared with the predicted results both in unreinforced and reinforced red soil and clay beds. The effect of number of geogrid layers on the settlement of footing under varying loads also analyzed. The settlement of footing has decreased as the increase in geogrid layers for both Black cotton soil and red soil. The settlement of footing is less in Black cotton soil due to high cohesion and angle of internal friction compared to Red soil.