Experimental investigation of bearing capacity of circle footing on sand slope reinforced with geogrid

In the present study, the effect of geogrid layers and soil density were investigated in the sand slope model reinforced with geogrid layers. The soil slope did not have stability in normal condition and was unusable for embankment operations. But it reached to the appropriate bearing capacity for embankment operation with improvement made by reinforcing and compacting the desired soil. The main purpose was to compare the footing bearing capacity and soil swelling of the reinforced with the non-reinforced states and also to evaluate the impact of the two soil compacted states with various thicknesses. 19 different states were investigated. The main parameters studied were soil density, the number of geogrid layers, and the distance from the slope edge. The results indicated that the soil slope, which had no stability in the non-compacted -unreinforced state, achieved high bearing capacity using geogrid layers and soil compaction. So that the maximum bearing capacity in compacted reinforced state and when footing was located 30 cm from the slope edge was 433 percent higher than the only reinforced state and 325 percent higher than only compacted state. Also, swelling of first layer of slope was significantly lower relative to the tolerance amount of bearing capacity and more uniformity was observed in all slope locations.The results also indicated that, in the compacted-unreinforced state, an increase in the number of compaction layers did not affect the bearing capacity of footing in the vicinity of the slope. But by moving the footing from the slope edge to 30 cm, the increasing the number of compaction layers from 5 to 7 layers caused increasing the bearing capacity by 34%.s.