Bearing capacity of isolated square footing resting on contaminated sandy soil with crude oil

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is the evaluation of bearing capacity of isolated square footing resting on clean and oil-contaminated sand. The study is aimed at determining the effect of percentage of oil content in sand and the depth of the contaminated sand layer under the footing on the bearing capacity of footing. A series of routine laboratory tests were carried out on sand to obtain the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties. Crude oil is used as a contamination material. The research-included the completion of experimental work that consists of a series of loading tests carried on model of isolated square footing resting on clean and oil-contaminated sand. The contaminated sand layers were prepared by mixing the sand with crude oil at percent (10 and 20) % by weight of dry sand to simulate the field conditions. The depth of contaminated sand layer (d) under the footing was chosen depending on the footing width (B) as expressed by (d/B) ratio and varied as (0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2) to simulate the field conditions. The results showed that the contamination influences the load-settlement curves and leads to a reduction in its bearing capacity. The bearing capacity of the footing decreases significantly with increasing both the percentage of oil content and the depth of the contaminated sand layer. The results also showed that the presence of oil in sand changes the mode of shear failure in sand under the footing from local shear failure to the punching shear failure.