Experimental Studies on the Influence of Prestress in Geogrid Reinforced Foundation

Earlier when constructing a structure on soil of weak strength parameters, one option was to reject the area and relocate to new area of good soil conditions. In the present twenty-first century connectivity between remote places have become a basic requirement. Roadways, railways are required to be built on any available foundation soil. Geotechnical engineers worldwide are proposing various reinforcing techniques to improve the weak foundation soils. Practices like replacing the whole weak soil with higher strength soil or opting deep foundation techniques are highly uneconomical. Reinforcing the foundation soil with geosynthetics has proven to improve the soil strength parameters and is economical. In this research, laboratory scale load tests are carried out for embankments placed on weak clayey soils. The effect of granular bed, size of granular bed, inclusion of geogrids and prestressing of geogrids on the load-settlement behaviour of foundation are studied here. The improvement in load-settlement behaviour in each case is presented here.