Abstract
In several field situations, especially in the hilly terrains, the construction of footings on slopes becomes essential. The factor of safety of a slope supporting a loaded footing on the crest is dependent on the position of the footing from the crest edge. Most studies in the past have focused on analysing the bearing capacity and settlement behaviour of a footing resting on a slope crest, but foundations in most infrastructure projects are usually built at some depth below the ground surface. Therefore, the availability of some form of design charts for determining the factor of safety of a slope supporting an embedded footing will be highly useful for the practising engineers. In the current work, the finite element analysis of a sandy soil slope supporting an embedded footing was carried out using the Plaxis 2D, a finite element-based commercial software, in order to examine the effect of slope geometry, soil properties, and footing locations on the stability of slope in terms of factor of safety. The results of the analysis show that the factor of safety of the slope increases with an increase in the footing edge distance, footing depth and soil relative density, but it decreases with an increase in the slope angle and applied pressure on the footing. Some design charts have been developed along with an illustrative example to explain how these charts can be used by the practising engineers.
Highlights
The stability analysis of slopes has been a challenging task for geotechnical engineers since ancient days
After validating the numerical simulation, a parametric study was conducted to analyse the effect of the following factors on the stability, defined in terms of factor of safety (F), of the sandy slope supporting the embedded footing loads, as presented in Fig. 1: slope angle ( β ), sand relative density (Dr), footing edge distance (e), footing depth (D) and applied footing pressure (q)
The stability analysis of a sandy slope supporting an embedded footing has been evaluated by developing a numerical model with focus on the factor of safety
Summary
The stability analysis of slopes has been a challenging task for geotechnical engineers since ancient days. In assessing the stability of any slope, the focus is mainly on calculating the factor of safety to estimate the degree of closeness of the slope from the failure condition. When a foundation is built on a slope, the factor of safety is expected to reduce depending on the foundation location relative to the crest edge and its depth. Several studies have been carried out on the bearing capacity and settlement behaviour of footings resting on unreinforced slopes. Some investigators have developed analytical formulations to estimate the bearing capacity of a footing positioned on a slope [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Meyerhof [4] developed an analytical formulation to estimate the bearing capacity of a footing on a slope face and crest for both completely cohesive and cohesionless soils.
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