Bearing capacity of surface circular footings on granular material under low gravity fields

Abstract

Low gravity fields have been simulated through magnetic acceleration to conduct experimental study on bearing capacity of circular footings on a type of crushable planetary regolith simulant, which has comparable density and particle size distribution of lunar soil. The load–settlement responses of surface spread footings are obtained by investigating the relative density, footing size and gravity effects. Applying the hyperbolic asymptote method, normalised foundation stiffness and ultimate bearing capacity are obtained by curve fitting and predicted by power functions using multivariate nonlinear regression. The results show that the nonlinear gravity effect is not negligible, related to stress condition, soil dilatancy and mobilised friction angle. A cone penetration test (CPT)-based method for prediction of bearing capacity is proposed with correlations between ultimate bearing capacity of footings and shallow penetration stiffness of CPTs, avoiding the uncertainties of soil property estimations. Analyses of allowable bearing capacity and footing influence zone in consideration of footing size and gravity effects could therefore improve the design of shallow foundations on the Moon and Mars, and provide new understandings and potential implications to the bearing capacity of shallow foundations on crushable granular material in both terrestrial and extraterrestrial geotechnical engineering.