ABSTRACT
The decreasing availability of proper construction sites has led to the increased use of marginal ones, where the bearing capacity of the underlying deposits is very low. By the application of geosynthetics it is possible to use shallow foundations even in marginal soils instead of expensive deep foundations. This is done by either reinforcing cohesive soil directly or replacing the poor soils with stronger granular fill in combination with geosynthetic reinforcement. In low-lying areas with poor foundation soils, the geosynthetic reinforced foundation bed can be placed over the weak soil. The resulting composite ground (reinforced foundation bed) will improve the load carrying capacity of the footing and will distribute the stresses on a wider area on the underlying weak soils, hence reducing settlements. During the past 30 years, the use of reinforced soils to support shallow foundations has received considerable attention. Many experimental and analytical studies have been performed to investigate the behaviour of reinforced foundation beds for different soil types (eg. Binqet and Lee (1975), Shivashankar et al. (1993)). Several experimental and analytical studies were conducted to evaluate the bearing capacity of footings on reinforced soil (eg. Shivashankar and Setty (2000); Shivashankar and Reddy (1998); Madhavilatha and Somwanshi (2009); Alamshahi and Hataf (2009); Vinod et al. (2009) Arun et al. (2008) etc).
