Pressure-settlement behavior of square and rectangular skirted footings resting on sand

Abstract

The present study deals with the Pressure-settlement behavior of square and rectangular skirted footing resting on sand and subjected to a vertical load through a laboratory experimental study. A series of load tests were conducted in the model test tank to evaluate the improvement in pressure-settlement behavior and bearing capacity of square and rectangular model footings with and without structural skirt. The footing of width 5 cm and 6 cm and length/width ratio of 1 and 2 was used. The relative density of sand was maintained at 30%, 50%, 70%, and 87% respectively. The depth of skirt was varied from 0.25 B to 1.0 B. All the tests were carried out using a strain controlled loading frame of 50 kN capacity. The strain rate for all test was kept 0.24 mm/min. The results of present study reveal that, the use of structural skirt improves the bearing capacity of footing significantly. The improvement in bearing capacity was observed almost linearly proportional to the depth of skirt. The improvement in bearing capacity of skirted footings over footing without skirt was observed in the range of 33.3% to 68.5%, 68.9% to 127% and 146.7% to 262% for a skirt depth of 0.25 B, 0.50 B and 1.0 B respectively. The skirted footings were found more effective for sand at relative density of 30% and 50% than at relative density of 70% and 87%. The bearing capacity was found to increase linearly with footing width for footings with and without skirts. This observation was found to be consistent for footings with different skirt depths and for relative density of sand i.e., 30%, 50%, 70%, and 87%. The obtained results from the study for footing with and without skirts were comparable with available solutions from literature.