Bearing Capacity of Soft Ground Reinfoced by Geosynthetics and Sand Mat

In order to improve the bearing capacity of soft ground for the purpose of getting a trafficability of construction vehicles, the geosynthetics-sandmat system has often been used. Yamanouchi had proposed the equation of calculating the bearing capacity about this kind of bearing mechanism, which has a soft ground-geosynthetics-sandmat system. The bearing capacity equation by Yamanouchi has been widely using in our country. However this equation includes an important contradictory concept because if the contact width of vehicles is incresed to reduce the contact pressure, the bearing capacity is decresed on the contray according to this equation. In order to investigate this contradictory concept, the bearing capacity test has been performed on the soft model ground with geosynthetics-sandmat system. From the test results about various kinds of models, the principle that explain the contradictory concept has been found and on the basis of this principle the new bering capacity equation has been proposed by modifying Yamanouchi equation.