Int J Performability Eng ›› 2022, Vol. 18 ›› Issue (10): 690-701.doi: 10.23940/ijpe.22.10.p2.690-701

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Bearing Capacity of a Circular Footing Resting on Geogrid Reinforced Foundation: An Experimental and Neuro-Fuzzy based Model

Md Asfaque Ansari* and Lal Bahadur Roy   

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Patna, Bihar, 800001, India
  • Submitted on ; Revised on ; Accepted on
  • Contact: *E-mail address: asfaque06@yahoo.com

Abstract: In this study, laboratory model tests were performed to investigate the bearing strength of a circular footing resting on the foundation bed. Four types of foundation beds were used: homogeneous sand, homogeneous clay, layered soil (clay-sand), and layered soil with a geogrid reinforcement (clay-geogrid-sand). The geogrid was placed at the interface between the sand and clay layer. The undrained shear strength of clay varied from 7 kPa to 56 kPa. The relative density and the depth of the sand layer were kept constant throughout the tests. The laboratory model test findings show that the unreinforced layered soil improves footing pressure 3.23 times, while a geogrid reinforced layered soil improves footing pressure by 3.88 times as compared to homogenous clay beds. This study also proposed an Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) model for predicting the footing pressure by utilizing the laboratory model test datasets. The number of membership functions and their types were changed to find the best model. Results show that the proposed ANFIS model can predict the footing strength of a geogrid reinforced foundation bed with greater accuracy (R2 = 0.99855, RMSE = 0.0085). The optimal ANFIS model was found when three Gaussian membership functions were assigned to each input parameter.

Key words: ANFIS, geogrid, bearing capacity, layered soil, sensitivity analysis