Seismic bearing capacity of strip footings on fiber reinforced soils by the stress characteristics method

In this paper, the bearing capacity of strip footings on fiber reinforced granular soil has been studied. The stress characteristics or slip line method has been used for the analysis. In the selected failure criterion, the orientation of the fibers are isotropic and fibers are not ruptured. Seismic effects have been considered in the equilibrium equations as the horizontal and vertical pseudo-static coefficients. The equilibrium equations have been solved using the finite difference method. The provided computer code can solve the stress characteristics network and calculate the bearing capacity. The bearing capacity has been presented as the bearing capacity factors due to the unit weight of the soil and surcharge. Several graphs have been prepared for the practical purposes. Also, a closed form solution has been presented for the bearing capacity factor due to the surcharge. By the parametric studies, the effects of the geometry and soil properties have been investigated. Results show that the bearing capacity increases with an increase on the average concentration and aspect ratio of the fibers, the fiber/matrix friction angle and the soil friction angle. Furthermore, the extent of the failure zone is increased with increasing the pseudo-static coefficients and decreasing the surcharge.