Authors : Sura Saadoon, Ali Al-Robay and Kadhim A. Al-Abbas
Abstract: In the center and South regions of Iraq (Mesopotamia) the soil is weak, that has low bearing capacity and high settlement. Considerably the sand cushion is one of the best techniques used frequently to treat the weak soil and enhance its mechanical properties such as bearing capacity and consequently reduce its settlement. In this research an experimental study has been carried out to study the load-settlement behaviour of two groups of footings.The first group consists of footing on natural soil (weak soil) and footing on the flat sand cushion, the second group consists of footing on a curvilinear sand cushion and the footing on the reinforced curvilinear sand cushion. Test results showed that, the use of a sand cushion, reduce the soil settlement and increase the load applied capacity. The measurements of settlement are taking place for the first and second groups at the average load of P = 75 kPa. It has been indicated that, the use of flat cushion is allowed to reduce the soil settlement up to 13%, the curvilinear sand cushion reduced the settlement up to 16% while the curvilinear sand cushion that has been reinforced with geotextile reduced the settlement by 34% compared with the natural soil base settlement under the same load.
Sura Saadoon, Ali Al-Robay and Kadhim A. Al-Abbas, 2017. Experimental Study on using Different Shapes of Sand Cushion in Weak Soil. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 12: 7959-7964.