Seismic Bearing Capacity of Strip Foundations on Fiber-Reinforced Granular Soil

The present study investigated the bearing capacity of strip footings on a bed of granular fiber-reinforced soils. Analyses were performed by the stress characteristics method (SCM). The failure criterion considers anisotropic distribution of fiber orientation and ignores the rupture of reinforcements. Seismic effects were included in the stress equilibrium equations as the horizontal and vertical pseudo-static coefficients. Stress equilibrium equations were solved by the finite difference method. A computer code was provided to solve the problem. Using the soil and reinforcement input parameters, the code determines the characteristics network and calculates the bearing capacity. The bearing capacity was expressed as the bearing capacity factors of the soil unit weight and surcharge. Parametric analysis was performed to investigate the effect of soil and reinforcement parameters on the bearing capacity and the shape of the failure zone. The outcomes indicated that the SCM results lower ultimate bearing capacity as compared with the upper bound method. Also, the depth of the failure zone increases with an increase in the amount of reinforcement or decrease in the horizontal seismic coefficient. Considering the anisotropic distribution of fiber orientations leads to more bearing capacity than the isotropic distribution.