The Behaviour of Confined Granular soil loaded by a square footing

Abstract

This research involves the behaviour of confined granular soil supported by asquare footing. A series of bearing capacity tests were carried out on a small-scalelaboratory model, which filled with sand, placed in a dense state and confined withUPVC cell. The response of an unconfined state was measured in the beginning,and then compared with the confined sand. The studied variables included thecylinder height and diameter, the depth of the footing to the top of the cylinder andthe embedded depth of the footing.The test results indicated that the soil confinement resists lateral displacement ofsand underneath the footing, which is leading to a significant improvement for theresponse of the footing. The curves of load-settlement generally showed the sametrend in all the cases. Failure was considered as a settlement, which was equal to8% of the total footing width. Also, the recommended optimum cell height,diameter, footing depth to the top of the cylinder and the embedded depth offooting that give the maximum bearing capacity improvement were presented anddiscussed. According to the present research results, a conclusion based on the soilconfinement role and found to be notably increased the bearing capacity andstiffness. Furthermore, a modification of load–settlement behaviour of the subgrade sand was also gained.