Quantifying Settlement Characteristics in Granular Pile Anchor Foundation with Diverse Footing Shapes

Expansive soils challenge the stability of several civil engineering structures. Due to the presence of Montmorillonite claymineral, they have inherent property of swelling and shrinking up on wetting and drying. Settlement occurs when expansive soilswells or shrinks, causing severe damage to foundations, buildings, roadways, and retaining structures. In such soils, it isnecessary to construct a foundation that avoids the adverse effects of settlement. The use of granular pile is one of the effectiveand efficient methods of ground improvement because of its ability in improving the bearing capacity and reducing thesettlement of different soft soils. The clayey soil chosen for this study is from Punchakkari and granular soil used is obtainedlocally, which are used in this project. Steel rods & Anchor piles of lengths 10, 20, 30 and 40 cm were used respectively. To findthe settlement, plate load test were conducted on circular and square footing with pile and GPA of varying lengths. From theresults, optimum length of pile & GPA is obtained as 30 cm. Percentage of settlement decreased after conducting the test withpile for circular & square footing is obtained as 37.75% & 22.28% respectively. Percentage of settlement decreased afterconducting the test with GPA for circular & square footing is 45.41% & 44.8% respectively. While comparing the results, GPAwith circular footing is more effective in reducing settlement than square footing