Evaluation of the main factors in uencing the behavior of strip footings on geogrid reinforced soils

Soils reinforced by geogrids exhibit dierent behavior, compared to unreinforcedsoils, due to having high tensile strength elements. in this paper, the main factorsinuencing the behavior of such reinforced soil under a strip footing are investigated anddiscussed. a numerical model for the reinforced soil is developed using flac-2d nitedierence software. the model is calibrated, and then dierent important factors, such aswidth, number, distance and depth of the rst layer of geogrid, are studied and evaluated.the qualitative behavior of the reinforced soil under dierent conditions of reinforcementelements is also studied in this work. the results of several analyses show that the optimumdepth of the rst layer of geogrid is one fourth of the footing width, and the other layerswould have eective role up to 1.75 times of the width. also, the distance between geogridlayers needs to be decreased in case of increasing their number whose optimum value is lessthan half of the footing width. the geogrid width and its tensile strength have considerableeect on the behavior of the reinforced soil when geogrid layers are in optimum position.