ABSTRACT
The construction of many civil engineering structures is hindered by the poor condition of near-surface soils. Structures built on loose sands or weak clays always undergo excessive settlement. Thus, measures should be undertaken to improve the shear strength characteristics of these soils in order for safe and economic structures to be built. In situ treatment has evolved markedly with soil reinforcement using planner layers of geosynthetic as one of the well developed techniques. The behaviour of conventionally reinforced soils depends mainly upon the frictional resistance between reinforcing layers and surrounding soil. In this paper, an alternative approach is proposed and examined for improving the bearing capacity of weak soils. The proposed technique involves wrapping the soil underneath the footings by a layer of geosynthetic in order to create a wrapped cushion. Results of numerical investigation carried out using a finite element code “ABAQUS" are presented and validated against physical experiments. The elasto-plastic Drucker-Prager Cap model is used to model the soil behaviour. The interaction between reinforcing material and surrounding soil and between footing and reinforcing material is modelled using “Contact pair" models. The results of the proposed technique seem promising over the conventional soil reinforcement technique