Investigation of the Load Settlement Behaviour of Shallow Foundation on Latex-Coated Coir Needle Felt Reinforced Soil Bed

For a sustainable planet, the need for geosynthetics has been increasing day by day. Also, geosynthetics plays a crucial part in enhancing soil properties and can effectively improve bearing capacity of structures erected on sandy ground. Therefore, the study aims to investigate effect of latex-coated coir needle felt reinforcement on BCR (Bearing Capacity Ratio) and SRF (Settlement Reduction Factor) of shallow foundation in a sand bed. A square footing with a thickness of 25mm and a size of 200mm was employed to conduct model plate load experiments on a sand bed that was reinforced with uncoated, single side latex-coated, double side latex-coated coir needle felt each having 1000 GSM in a test tank of dimension 500 x 500 x 500 mm. The number of layers of coir needle felt in planar, wave and looped configurations were the parameters that were examined. Bearing capacity (BC) of reinforced sand was approximately 30.43%-67.34% greater than that of unreinforced sand. SRF of reinforced sand has been elevated by approximately 15% to 43.22% in comparison to unreinforced sand.