Bearing Capacity of Footings Resting on Georeinforced Soil Structures

In this paper, the kinematic theorem of limit analysis is applied for evaluating the seismic bearing capacity of footings resting on soil structures reinforced with geosynthetics, within the framework of the pseudo-static approach. First, some comparisons with other methods proposed in the literature are shown. Then, results are presented to illustrate the effects of soil and structure inertia on the reduction of the seismic bearing capacity. Finally, the effect of seismic vertical acceleration in combination with horizontal acceleration is considered. It is shown that the seismic vertical acceleration plays a role both on the bearing capacity and reinforcement length.