Publication

Abstract : Machine foundations are special type of foundations, designed to carry various loads which have wide range of speeds, loads, and operating conditions. Therefore, in addition to static loads due to the weight of the foundation, they transmit dynamic loads to the soil below. Due to this, the size of the machine foundation required is big, thus making construction cost also huge. To tackle this problem, dynamic properties of the soil upon which the foundation rests can be modified by reinforcing it with geosynthetic material. In this paper, numerical analysis on static as well as dynamic properties of soil has been carried out, by using a finite element analysis software, PLAXIS. The performance of an unreinforced sand was compared with a polypropylene geotextile-reinforced sand. Modeling of the entire setup in PLAXIS 2D 8.6 was done to simulate laboratory model footing test using cyclic plate load test. The effect of depth and width of placement of polypropylene geotextile on improving the dynamic behavior of sand has been studied. The obtained results showed that with the incorporation of geotextile in sand, dynamic properties of sand were significantly improved. It was found that for a time period of 0.05 s, there has been a difference of 10 mm in total extreme displacement when the model with unreinforced and reinforced sand are compared.