Critical Review on Bearing Capacity Analysis of Reinforced

Earth Slabs by Jean Binquet and Kenneth Lee

Lokit Khemka
CE14M032
This paper addressed an analytical solution for bearing capacity of a strip footing on a granular soil
containing horizontal layers of flat metal strips or ties with relatively high tensile strength. The paper
also compared the analytical results with experimental data, besides giving a cost analysis.
This paper was one of the first to use the concept of Bearing Capacity Ratio (Ratio of contact
pressure of the footing on the reinforced soil to unreinforced soil at the same vertical settlement).
BCR can be used to express the effect of the reinforcement.
The analysis was almost entirely theoretical. The following assumptions are made during analysis:
(i) As the footing load increases, the footing and the soil beneath move down while the soil
to sides move outward. The boundary between the downward moving and outward
moving soil is the locus of the points of maximum shear stress at every depth. It has
been observed in experimental study that tie breaks coincided approximately with these
assumed slip surfaces.
(ii) The slip surfaces are assumed to be symmetric on both sides of the footing. However,
the actual failure will almost always tend to develop on only one side, if the footing is
free to rotate. Nevertheless, up to the point of a major catastrophic failure, the footing
will probably settle more or less uniformly. Hence, this assumption should be valid.
(iii) The stresses are independent of whether or not the foundation soil is reinforced. The
extra load carrying capacity is from the tensile strength of the reinforcement.
(iv) The central zone of soil moves down with respect to the outer zone along the slip
surface and it drags the ties along with it. At the slip surface the ties are assumed to
undergo two right angle bends around two frictionless rollers.
(v) It is also assumed that the tie force per layer varies inversely with the number of layers,
N, in the foundation. As mentioned in the paper, this assumption is arbitrary with no
explanation behind it.
(vi) Forces are evaluated for the same size of footing and the same settlement for a footing
on unreinforced and reinforced soil.
(vii) The shear and normal stresses at any point are calculated from elastic theory. This
assumption is valid since granular soils can be considered to be elastic to some extent.
From the experiment data, it is clear that there is a remarkable agreement between theory and
experimental data both for the bearing capacity failures and for the mode of failure.
This is method however, have some limitations. For instance, this method is useful only for
granular soils and for strip footings. Moreover, upon analysis, we find that tie resistance in same
in every layer. The length of the reinforcement obtained from this method is much higher than
that from other theories. Hence, this method can give a somewhat uneconomical design.