ANALYSES OF MULTI-EDGE FOOTINGS RESTED ON LOOSE AND DENSE SAND

Abstract

Shallow footings are generally designed as square, rectangular, strip, circular or ring in geotechnical engineering. In some cases, different shallow footing geometries (irregular footing geometries) also can be selected because of the static, architectural and economical reasons. Multi-edge shallow footings are irregular shaped footings having the number of the edges and sides greater than four. They are used to transmit the loads from the irregular shaped structures to the underlying soils safely and economically. The study presented herein describes the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and multi-linear regression model (MLR) for prediction of ultimate loads of multi-edge shallow footings. The data used in running of network models have been obtained from extensive series of laboratory model tests. The parameters investigated are the footing width, the footing length and the density of sand soil. A total of fifty tests were performed using the parameters of the footing geometry (H, +, T and square shaped), the footing size and the soil type (loose sand, dense sand) on the bearing capacity characteristics. The results of the experimental study proved that the soil density and the footing size had considerable eects on the load of and the ANN model serves as simple and reliable tool for predicting the behavior of the multi-edge footings.