Evaluation of bearing capacity improvement using composite grids

Abstract

Recently, composite reinforcements in which combinations of materials and material forms such as strips, grids, and strips and anchors, depending on requirements, have proven to be effective in various ground improvement applications. Composite geogrids studied in this paper belong to the category of composite reinforcements and are useful for bearing capacity improvement. The paper presents evaluation of results of bearing capacity tests conducted on a composite geogrid, made of composite reinforcement consisting of steel and cement mortar. The study shows that the behavior of composite reinforcements follows the general trends observed in the case of conventional geogrids, with reference to the depth of first layer below the footing, number of layers of reinforcement, and vertical spacing of the reinforcement. Results show that the performance is comparable to that of a conventional polymer geogrid.