Bearing Capacity Factor of Shallow Foundation on Reinforced Sloped Clayey Soil

Abstract

The placement of buildings and structures on/or adjacent to slopes is possible, but this poses a danger to the structure due to failures that occur in slopes. Therefore, a solution or improvement should be determined for these issues of the collapse of the structure as a result of the failure of the slopes. A laboratory model has been built to test the impact of some variables on the bearing capacity factor. The variables include the magnitude of static axial load applied at the center of footing, the depth of embedment, the spacing between geogrid reinforcement layer and the numbering of the geogrid sheet under the footing, the inclination angle of slope clayey soil (β), the spacing between the footing's edge and the slope's end (b/H). The results show that the critical case of reduction in bearing capacity is mobilized at (b/H˂ 0.25) and (β˃ 30°). A design chart has been obtained to the case of unreinforced slope soil under a footing to describe the reduction in (Nc) when increasing the inclination angle and another design chart of the case of reinforced slope soil with (N=1, 2 and 3) has been obtained to show the increase in value of (Nc) with increasing the number of the reinforced layer at different values of (β) and finally simple equations have been obtained in order to calculate the ultimate bearing capacity of foundation on sloped clayey soil at different number of reinforcement.