2001 Volume 16 Pages 75-82
The load-settlement behaviour and bearing capacity of a strip footing on reinforced sand was simulated by a nonlinear elasto-visco-plastic FEM analysis incorporating an elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model for sand that was developed to have a stress path-independent work-hardening parameter based on the modified plastic strain energy concept. The constitutive model has been modified to take into account the nonlinear viscous property of sand based on a three-component model consisting of a hypo-elastic component connected in series to a combination of a non-linear inviscid and viscous components connected to each other in parallel. The model ground was made of air-dried dense Toyoura sand, which was either unreinforced or reinforced with different lengths, numbers of layers and vertical spacings of layers of linear, tensile reinforcing members placed horizontal beneath a strip footing. Load-settlement relationships obtained by the FEM analysis were well comparable with those from the physical experiment. Although the peak footing load obtained by the FEM analyses was slightly larger than the measured value, the effects of reinforcing patterns and progressive failure of model ground with a development of shear bands observed in the tests were simulated very well.
