Improvement of Bearing Capacity for Soft Soils Supported by Confined Footings and Sand Columns: A Numerical Study

Document Type : Original research articles

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1 Civil Engineering Department, Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, El-Minia, Egypt

2 Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, El-Minia University, El-Minia, Egypt

Abstract

The structures constructed on soft soils experience several severe problems like instability in vertical, lateral directions, and excessive displacement. Soft clay deposits are extensively located in many coastal areas which exhibit poor strength, compressibility, excessive plasticity, and tendency to shrink or swell. Both confined footings and sand piles are generally used to improve the soft soils underneath the shallow foundations by reducing the settlement and increasing the bearing capacity of such soils. Improvement using confined footings located in different depths, and using sand columns (End bearing and floating) all presented in this investigation. Analyses using finite element method GeoStudio 2018 ( SIGMA / W ) finite element 2D program were done to assess the settlement of soft clay which improved using confined footings, floating and end bearing sand piles. GeoStudio was used to verify a physical laboratory model which was built by [1]. For the situation of confined footings, floating and end bearing sand piles, settlement values obtained from software analysis were compared with the experimental results of [1] for evaluating the average settlement of flexible foundations on soft clay soils. The results show good agreements between the numerical and the laboratory models tests. Discussion of results show that the possibility of using GeoStudio 2018 Finite Element 2D program to simulate the settlement of shallow foundation laid on soft clay soil is feasible.

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