Techno Press
Techno Press

Geomechanics and Engineering
  Volume 30, Number 1, July10 2022 , pages 51-66
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/gae.2022.30.1.051
 


Bearing capacity and failure mechanism of skirted footings
Rajesh P. Shukla and Ravi S. Jakka

 
Abstract
    The article presents the results of finite element analyses carried out on skirted footings. The bearing capacity increases with the provision of the flexible and rigid skirt, but the effectiveness varies with various other factors. The skirts are more efficient in the case of cohesionless soils than cohesive and c-o soils. Efficiency reduces with an increase in the soil strength and footing depth. The rigid skirt is relatively more efficient compared to the flexible skirt. In contrast, to the flexible skirt, the efficiency of the rigid skirt increases continuously with skirt length. The difference in the effectiveness of both skirts becomes more noticeable with an increase in the strength parameters, skirt length, and footing depth. The failure mechanism also changes significantly with the inclusion of a rigid skirt. The rigid skirt behaves as a solid embedded footing, and the failure mechanism becomes confined with an increase in the skirt length. Few small-scale laboratory tests were carried out to study the flexible and rigid skirt and verify the numerical study results. The numerical analysis results are further used to develop nonlinear equations to predict the enhancement in bearing capacity with the provision of the rigid and flexible skirts.
 
Key Words
    bearing capacity; failure; FEM; improvement factors; skirted foundation
 
Address
Rajesh P. Shukla: Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, Srinagar, 190006
Ravi S. Jakka: Department of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, India, 247667
 

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