Pseudo-static bearing capacity of strip footing with vertical skirts resting on cohesionless slopes by finite element limit analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using vertical skirts as soil reinforcement in conjunction with strip footing can increase the bearing capacity of a footing located near a cohesionless slope. This paper adopted lower and upper bounds of finite element limit analysis (FELA) to compute the bearing capacity of a strip footing with vertical skirts resting on the cohesionless slope under pseudo-static condition. A wide range of efficient factors on the bearing capacity and the failure pattern are investigated. Design tables are presented to obtain the bearing capacity of a strip footing with vertical skirts resting on cohesionless slopes in terms of bearing capacity ratio (BCR). The results showed that the BCR is improved notably, by using vertical skirts in conjunction with a strip footing in all cases. Furthermore, the BCR is affected markedly by increasing kh . Also, the results of this study are compared with available solutions in the literature.