Bearing capacity of square footing supported by a geobelt-reinforced crushed stone cushion on soft soil

Geobelt, made of polymeric materials, is one of the reinforcement materials. In the present study, a large site loading test program was performed on a square footing supported by the geobelt-reinforced crushed stone layer on the soft soil. The reinforced soil layer is thin, in which the ratio of the reinforced soil layer depth and the footing width is only 0.2. The various parameters studied in this testing program include the number of geobelt layers, the depth of first geobelt layer beneath the footing, the vertical spacing between two geobelt layers, and the linear density of reinforcement. The results show that the performance of the geobelt-reinforced crushed stone cushion was obviously improved compared with unreinforced crushed stone cushion. For one layer of geobelt reinforcement, the effect of the geobelt reinforcement is mainly controlled by the depth of first geobelt layer beneath the footing and linear density of reinforcement. With a shallow depth of the geobelt layer of reinforcement, it works efficiently at a small settlement of the footing. The beneficial effect of a double layer of geobelt is greater than that of a single layer, especially when the settlements are concerned.