Evaluation of Soil Replacement Thickness for the Optimize Bearing Capacity Improvement in Soft Clays

Abstract

Foundations are there to transfer the upcoming structural loads uniformly to the soil beneath. For this, the soil must have an adequate bearing capacity to sustain the upcoming structural load without failure. In case of Shallow foundations, failure is governed by two factors that are the shear failure of the soil and the excessive settlements of the foundation. To avoid these types of failures, either the site is changed or the bearing capacity of the soil is improved with the help of different techniques. One of such technique is the soil replacement technique. In this project, the effect of the depth of soil replacement on the overall bearing capacity of the soil is studied with the help of experimentation as well as with different software. Firstly, the footing size is kept constant and against each footing size, the effect of soil replacement at different depths (i.e. 0.25d, 0.5d, 0.75d; where d= diameter of footing) against bearing capacity is studied. At last, all the scenarios are run on FEA software (PLAXIS) to analyze and counter check the efficiency of the results obtained. After analyzing all the results certain conclusions were drawn with respect to the bearing capacity improvement and its relation with depth of replacement.