NUMERICAL MODELLING OF PRESTRESSED GEOGRID REINFORCED SOIL

UNDER DIFFERENT CONDITIONS

Soukat Kumar Das , M. Tech student, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Roorkee, Roorkee-247667, India.
N . K . Samadhiya , Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of

Technology Roorkee, Roorkee-247667, India.

ABSTRACT
Rapid industrialization and increase in population has resulted in scarcity of suitable ground
conditions. It has driven the need of ground improvement by means of reinforcement with
geosynthetics with minimum possible settlement and with maximum possible safety.
Prestressing the geosynthetics offers a very quick, economical yet safe method of gaining the
goal. Commercially available software PLAXIS 3D has made the analysis of prestressed
geosynthetics simpler with much practical simulations of the ground conditions, saving
valuable time and labour. Attempts have been made so far to analyse the effect of prestressing
geosynthetics with varying conditions such as the effect of shape of the footing, the effect of
depth of the footing, effect of size of footing, effect of multiple geogrid layer, the effect of
two square footing placed nearby on the load bearing capacity and the settlement
characteristics of prestressed geogrid reinforced soil. The prestressed geogrid reinforced
(PGR) has given almost 200% increment in bearing capacity with 66% reduction in
settlement with respect to ordinary Geogrid Reinforced (GR) soil. Though circular footing
has given lesser value of improvement for all the cases, the bearing pressure has been found
to increase with increase in size of the footing as expected. The prestressing concept is valid
for footing at different depths as well. The optimum number of geogrid layers has been found
to be lesser for PGR soil than GR soil. The zone of adjacency for PGR soil has increased by
67% than Unreinforced (UR) soil and almost 25 % with respect to GR soil.
Keywords: Bearing, Geogrid, Pressure, Prestressed, Reinforced
* Corresponding author. Tel. 8126149744. Email address- soukatdthunder@gmail.com
(Soukat Kumar Das)