Tensile behaviour of geotextile reinforcement within the sandy soil supporting a strip footing

Abstract

The available analytical equations in the literature for the bearing capacity of geosynthetic-reinforced foundation soils include the tensile force developed in reinforcement as a product of mobilised tensile strain and the tensile modulus of the reinforcement. These methods overlook the fact that the tensile modulus of a geotextile is a function of strain, and is usually given based on in-isolation testing of geotextile. This study focuses on strain distribution and the mobilisation of tensile modulus in geotextile reinforcement buried within the sandy soil by using the laboratory model strip footing tests. The strain distribution results reveal that the tensile strain in the geotextile is maximum in the centre of the footing and decreases along the width of the footing. The mobilised tensile modulus of geotextile is also calculated from the increased bearing capacity of the reinforced soil by using available equations in the literature. Results show that the tensile modulus of the geotextile is mobilised in the range of 3–7% of the nominal values that are used in theoretical solutions for the estimation of mobilised tensile force in geotextile reinforcement. This can be due to the in-isolation methods being used by standards to measure the tensile modulus of geosynthetics.