Behaviour of sandy soil reinforced with geotextile having partially and fully wrapped ends

Abstract

The wraparound reinforcement technique has been studied recently by researchers as a way of improving the bearing capacity and load−settlement characteristics of a sand bed supporting a strip footing with a constant land width for foundation, but with the use of varying width of geotextile reinforcement. This research study presents an experimental evaluation of geotextile-reinforced sand bed enhanced with a wraparound reinforcement technique having partially and fully wrapped ends with the use of constant width of the geotextile reinforcement, but with varying land width of the foundation. Laboratory model tests were conducted to investigate the influence of the lap length coverage of wraparound ends on the load−settlement behaviour of reinforced sand. Additionally, an instrumentation programme with pressure cells was designed to study the pressure distribution in foundation sand beneath the geotextile layer. The test results reveal that fully wrapped models possess the most improved behaviour, with about 50% improvement in the bearing capacity and 50% reduction in the land width occupied by the reinforcement compared with a reinforced model without wraparound ends.