STUDY OF BEARING CAPACITY OF CLAYS BY MODEL TESTS

Abstract

Model footing tests have been conducted in boxes having transparent sides to study the failure pattern under footing and bearing capacity factor 10c* for compacted Dhanauri clay and Kaolin. The tests were conducted on strain controlled loading frame used for triaxial shear test. To achieve full saturation in compacted clays, saturation arrangement had been provided in the boxes. Unconsolidated undrained triaxial shear tests were conducted on samples in vertical, inclined (45°) and horizontal directions to determine the undrained shear strength and aniso-tropy in compacted clays. Variation in strength was found to be less than 4%. APparent angle of internal friction was neglected .in computation of *Nc* because it was found to be less than 3.59 "as,:the compaction was done on wet side of optimum moisture content and degree of saturation was more than 90%. *Ncl factor was found to vary from 5.52 to 7.08 for Dhanaurl clay and 4.81 to 6.22 for Kaolin, giving average 'Nci factor equal to 6.24 and 5.49' respectively. The average 'N c' factor for both the clays may be taken as 5.78. Consolidated drained triaxial shear tests were conducted to determine the effective stress parameters for Kaolin. Bear ing capacity was computed from Terzaghi's formula and compared with experimental value of bearing capacity. Terzaghi's formula gave bearing capacity equal to 1e45 kg/ant for general shear failure and 0461 kg/cams for .local shear failure against the experimental value equal to 1.33 kg/cma.