EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF RELATIVE DENSITY EFFECT ON BEARING CAPACITY OF SAND REINFORCED WITH GEOGRID

Abstract

Reinforced soil technology is considered one of the most important methods of soil improvement due to its simplicity and speed in implementation and saving cost. In this research a strip footing and geogrid (Tensar SS2) were used to reinforced sandy soil and investigated the effect of relative density on bearing pressure and compressibility. The soil was strengthen with four layers of (geogrid Tensar SS2) and used a five relative densities were (30.7%, 49.7%, 56.5%, 64%, and 75.9%) to include cases of loose, medium and dense sand. The results also showed the effect of relative density on the bearing capacity and the settlement as experimental tests indicated that increasing the relative density from 30.9% to 64% gave an improvement in soil bearing capacity, as well as an effective improvement in carrying capacity when increasing the relative density from 64%. The results showed that the bearing capacity when using relative densities of 49.7%, 56.5%, 64%, 75.9% increased by 1.218, 1.287, 1.512, and 2.1799, respectively, of the bearing capacity of reinforced soils with relative density of 30.7%. As for the effect of relative density on the settlement, it was found that the settlement is generally less in the case of soil with higher relative density.