THE BEARING CAPACITY OF A CIRCULAR FOOTING ON GYPSEOUS SOIL BEFORE AND AFTER IMPROVEMENT

Abstract

Bearing capacity of soil is an important factor in designing circular footing. It is directly related to foundation dimensions and consequently its performance. The calculations for obtaining the bearing capacity of a soil needs many varying parameters, for example soil type, depth of foundation, unit weight of soil, etc. In this work, the comparison between the values of bearing capacity of circular footing on gypseous soil before and after improvement determined by two different methods, the first method using compacted cement dust (Case1). The improvement were performed by making trench under the footing filled with compacted cement dust (at its optimum moisture content) at three depths [(Depth of trench, D =Width of trench, B =2 * the radius of footing R); (D=2B=4R) ; (D=3B=6R)], the trench had the same footing Dimensions, The second method is reinforcing gypseous soil with biaxial geogrids (Case2) have been shown to be an effective method for improving the ultimate bearing capacity of granular soils.