Influence of aperture size on the performance of square footing resting on rattan reinforced sand

ABSTRACT Rattan fibre as a reinforcement material can be a promising candidate for fabricating mattresses that improves the bearing capacity and settlement reduction of sand. Apart from observing the potential of rattan mats in reinforcing the sand beds, an attempt is made to understand the role of apertures with varying dimensions in enhancing the load bearing performance of sand. A series of plate load tests were performed to study the effect of the depth of top layer reinforcement, width, aperture size of rattan mats and number of reinforcement layers. After comparing the test results of various aperture sized mats, openly woven rattan mats performed superior to closely woven mats. The incorporation of rattan mats under the most effective reinforcement configuration has enhanced the bearing strength improvement factor and settlement reduction factor to 7.1 and 0.85, respectively, for closely woven rattan mats and about 8.16 and 0.94 for openly woven rattan mats with optimum aperture sizes.