A Lower Bound Estimate of the Bearing Capacity of Foundations on Inherently Anisotropic Sands: Verification with 100 Case Studies

Abstract

Bearing capacity of transversely isotropic soils have been studied by implementing the microstructure tensor in the previous works. This paper is a counterpart of the previous theoretical one which mainly focused on the verification and physical interpretation of the results. While the previous work mainly explained the theoretical framework with some numerical verifications, this paper contains a verification made by applying the results to a number of collected database of footing load tests both in the field and in the lab. The main idea is that the natural sedimentation process makes most soils some degree of anisotropy. This anisotropy is often neglected while geotechnical studies are conducted and when the bearing capacity is calculated. In this study, a comparison with theory and experimental results tries to explore the true degree of anisotropy in natural granular soil deposits, at least for practical purposes. Results indicate that if the anisotropy is ignored, the theoretical estimate of the bearing capacity is nearly 20% to 30% higher than the actual values measured in practice. Of course the nature of the test and the interpretation of the test data are influential on this general conclusion.