Experimental Study of the Effects of Bedrock on the Square Skirted Shallow Foundations Behavior

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of existence of a bedrock on the behavior of a square shallow foundation was explored. A series of experimental small scaled laboratory tests were carried out to study the effects of some parameters of skirt length and the depth of a bedrock on a square shallow foundation bearing capacity, displacement and behavior which has been subjected to vertical loading. In this case, sandy soils in different relative densities for the cases of loose, medium and dense were used as the soil layer. Also, to study the results of a rigid base layer, a comparison study was conducted on the laboratory results in two cases of with and without attendance of the bedrock. The results show a linear growth in ultimate bearing capacity ratio in variation of depth of the bedrock layer corresponding to different skirt length, while the increment rates are different in different soil relative density and for some cases the effect of the bedrock is insignificant.