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Determination of Compacted Granular Layer Thickness on Soft Clay using

Odemark's Method for Design of Shallow Foundation

Conference Paper · December 2017

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 Indian Geotechnical Conference 2017 GeoNEst
14-16 December 2017, IIT Guwahati, India

Determination of Compacted Granular Layer Thickness on Soft Clay

using Odemark’s Method for Design of Shallow Foundation
P.P. Biswas
M.K. Sahis
A. Sengupta
Department of Construction Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata – 700032
E-mail: drppb@yahoo.in; manojsahis@gmail.com; senguptaagni@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: In order to increase the bearing capacity of soft clay, filling of compacted sand is done by
removing the soft clay up to a specific depth. Present paper aims to find out a methodology for
determination of optimum depth of sand layer on the top of soft clay as a measure of ground improvement
technique. In this paper, strip footing carrying uniformly distributed load on compacted sand bed
followed by a soft clay layer in the form of a two layered system has been considered for analytical study.
Primarily an imaginary depth of soft clay layer at which the bearing capacity of clay as homogeneous
medium becomes equal to the vertical stress developed under strip load has been determined using
Terzaghi’s method and stress dispersion approach. The imaginary depth of homogenous soft clay thus
obtained has been transformed in to a two layered system by reverse application of Odemark’s approach
to determine the thickness of compacted sand bed. It has been found that the depth of sand bed increases
with increase in foundation load and decrease in cohesion of clay. Moreover, the depth of the sand bed
also decreases with the increase in friction angle and decrease in foundation width.
Keywords: Odemark method; strip footing; elastic modulus; compacted sand; soft clay
1. Introduction 2. Objective
Choice of shallow foundation is cost effective for Presence of weak soft clay within the influence
construction of low to medium storey building, if zone below shallow foundation affects adversely
the bearing capacity of soil below footing yields a the load carrying capacity of soil. In order to
better load bearing capacity. Therefore, the increase the bearing capacity of such soil, filling
geotechnical properties of subsoil on which the of compacted layer of granular soil is done after
foundation rests are important to determine the excavating and removing the soft clay up to a
bearing capacity. It is relevant to note that the specific depth. So, determination of optimum
bearing capacity of shallow foundation is largely depth of sand filling becomes an important factor
governed by the shear strength parameters of soil to ensure the stability of the foundation system
lying within the influence zone of footing. Such and the economy of the project. In this backdrop,
influence zone below the base level of foundation present paper aims to find out a methodology for
has been analyzed by Prandlt (1920), Terzaghi determination of optimum depth of compacted
(1943) and Meyerhof (1963, 1974, 1978) and sand bed to be placed on the top of soft clay for
Madhav and Sharma (1991). All those analysis placing shallow foundation.
reveal that the nature of failure of foundation in
3. Proposed Model
terms of shear failure was considered in respective
In this paper, load on foundation has been
research works to find out the extent of failure
assumed as uniformly distributed load acting on
zone below footing with the variations in soil
strip footing on compacted sand bed followed by a
properties with different boundary conditions. In
soft clay layer in the form of a two layered system.
this backdrop, the concept of influence zone of
Primarily an imaginary depth of soft clay layer at
footing in the subsoil needs to be examined
which the bearing capacity of clay becomes equal
judiciously to understand the depth of active soil
to the vertical stress developed under strip load
mass which takes part in the stability of the
has been determined using Terzaghi’s method and
foundation system in terms of shear as well as
stress dispersion approach. The depth of soft soil
settlement failure. Moreover, the factors which
thus obtained is the depth of homogenous clay
may affect the depth of influence zone are also
layer below which the stress due to foundation
important for evaluation of performance of
load becomes less than the bearing capacity of soil
shallow foundation during its service life.
and above which the soil will be subjected at a
 Determination of Compacted Granular Layer Thickness on Soft Clay using Odemark’s Method for Design of Shallow Foundation
larger stress than the bearing capacity thereby
indicating the zone of failure. The soft clay within
the zone of failure needs to be replaced by suitable
thickness of compacted sand bed with a better load
carrying capacity. Odemark’s method (P.Ullidtz,
1998) is generally used to transform a two layered
system into a homogenous system considering the
elastic moduli of the layers and thickness of top
layer. In the present analysis, the depth of
homogenous soft clay layer has been transformed
in to a two layered system by reverse application
of Odemark’s approach. The mathematical model
used in present work has been illustrated below
with relevant assumptions made in the model.
If B is the width of the footing and ℎ is the
imaginary depth at which the bearing capacity of
purely cohesive soft soil with cohesion 𝑐 becomes
equal to the vertical stress due to surface load
intensity (q) on a strip footing resting at ground
surface, the following expression may be obtained
using 2: 1 method of stress dispersion.
𝐵 layers are known.
𝑐𝑁𝑐 = 𝑞
𝐵+ℎ
𝐵
ℎ= (𝑞 − 𝑐𝑁𝑐 ) (1)
𝑐𝑁𝑐
Now, the depth thus obtained has to be
transformed into a two layer system using reverse
Odemark’s approach.
Odemark’s Method for system transformation
Odemark’s method assumes that the stress and
strain below a layer depend on the stiffness of that
layer only. If the thickness, moduli and Poisson
ratio of the layers are changed but the stiffness
remains unchanged, the stress and strains below
the layer should also remain unchanged. The
transformation of layers can be done in the
following manner as shown in Fig. 1 by
Odemark’s approach.
Fig. 1 Transformation of a layered system by
Odemark’s Approach
The two layer system with modulus 𝐸1 of
thickness ℎ1 has compacted sand layer in the
present model with Poisson ratio 𝜈1 as top layer
resting on bottom layer with modulus of 𝐸2
consists of soft clay and Poisson ration of 𝜈2 .
2
Transformation of such two layered system can be
done with a concept of equivalent thickness (ℎ𝑒 )
with a homogeneous modulus (𝐸2 ) and with a
Poisson ratio of 𝜈2 , which can be expressed as
3 𝐸1 1 − 𝜈2 2
ℎ𝑒 = ℎ1 √ ( ) (2)
𝐸2 1 − 𝜈1 2
If the Poisson’s ratio of soil of two layers are
assumed same then the equation may be expressed
as
3 𝐸2
ℎ1 = ℎ𝑒 √ (3)
𝐸1
In the present problem, the thickness of the
homogeneous clay (ℎ𝑒 ) may be obtained by
analytical approach using equation (1) Hence, the
thickness of top layer in a two layered system ℎ1
may be determined from the equation (3) if the
elastic moduli of compacted sand and soft clay
In the present paper, the ratio of elastic moduli of
compacted sand bed and soft clay has been
considered as the respective ratio of ultimate
bearing capacity (IS: 6403-1981) of soil with strip
footing which means
𝐸1 0.5𝛾𝐵𝑁𝛾
=
𝐸2 𝑐𝑁𝑐
where 𝑁𝑐 and 𝑁𝛾 are the bearing capacity factors,
and 𝛾= unit weight of soil
Therefore
3 𝑐𝑁𝑐
ℎ1 = ℎ𝑒 √ (4)
0.5𝛾𝐵𝑁𝛾
4. Validation
If the depth of compacted sand layer (ℎ1 ) is
relatively small compared with the foundation
width B, a punching shear failure may occur in the
top layer followed by a general shear failure in
bottom layer as shown in Fig. 2.
However, the ultimate bearing capacity of shallow
foundation with length L, and width B placed on a
stronger sand layer underlain by a weak clay that
extends to great depth as shown in Fig. 2 was
proposed by Meyerhof and Hanna (1978) and
may be expressed as
 Indian Geotechnical Conference 2017 - GeoNEst
14-16 December 2017, IIT Guwahati, India

𝐵 2𝐷𝑓 𝑘𝑠 𝑡𝑎𝑛ɸ1 5. Results and Discussions

𝑞𝑢 = 𝑐𝑁𝑐 + 𝛾1 ℎ1 2 (1 + ) (1 + ) It has been found that the thickness of compacted
𝐿 ℎ1 𝐵
+ 𝛾1 𝐷𝑓 (5)
If the footing is considered as a strip and the depth
of foundation 𝐷𝑓 = 0, with punching shear
coefficient 𝑘𝑠 , and unit weight of stronger soil 𝛾1 ,
the ultimate bearing capacity may expressed as
𝛾1 ℎ1 2 𝑘𝑠 𝑡𝑎𝑛ɸ1
𝑞𝑢 = 𝑐𝑁𝐶 + (6)
𝐵
Fig. 2 Sand layer underlain by soft clay soil layer
For comparison of test result obtained from
present approach, the foundation load intensity of
150 kN/m2, 200 kN/m2 and 250 kN/m2 have been
considered for a compacted sand layer with ϕ =
40° and γ =19 kN/m3. ‘𝑘𝑠 ’has been obtained from
the correlation recommended by Meyerhof and
Hanna for a ratio of ultimate bearing capacity of
sand on weak clay reduces with the increase in
angle of internal friction of sand. The rate of
change of variation in thickness was found to
decrease with the increase in friction angle and
have been presented in Fig. 3 where, the width of
foundation remains constant. Similar trend has
been observed in Fig.4 for variation of sand layer
thickness when the cohesion of clay was constant.
It has further been observed that the thickness of
compacted sand bed on the top of a clay deposit
increases with the increase in footing width and
vice versa. This trend can be justified from the
concept of significant depth suggested by Terzaghi
based on 20% stress contour depth from the base
of footing. The more is the width of footing more
will be the significant depth of soil mass below
footing, which takes part effectively both in shear
and settlement failure. However, effect of
variation in foundation depth on sand layer
thickness reduces when the compaction of sand is
better with an increased value of friction angle.
Moreover, it was also found that the required
thickness of sand bed increases linearly with the
increase in foundation load intensity for a specific
clay bed and vice versa. Such variation has been
presented in Fig. 5.
6
Compacted sand thickness(m)

c=15 kN/m2
top (𝑞1 ) and bottom layer (𝑞2 ). 5 c=20 kN/m2
𝑞1 𝑐𝑁𝑐 c=25 kN/m2
= (7) 4
𝑞2 0.5𝛾𝐵𝑁𝛾
where 𝑁𝛾 = Meyerhof ‘s Bearing capacity factor 3
𝑁𝑐 = 5.14, γ = Unit weight of compacted sand.
2
The comparative analysis has been presented in
Table-1 which reveals a reasonable good
1
agreement with the results obtained using the
analytical approach of Meyerhof and Hanna. The 0
input data considered for such comparison was
c = 20 kN/m2, ϕ = 40° and γ = 19 kN/m3. 0 20 40 60
Angle of Internal friction (°)
Table-1 Comparison with Meyerhof’s study Fig. 3 Variation of sand layer thickness with angle
of internal friction
Footing Compacted sand layer
thickness (m) (Foundation Load Intensity = 80kN/m2 and
Load Intensity Foundation width = 2m)
(kN/m2) Meyerhof Present study
150 1.40 1.44
200 2.01 2.10
250 2.43 2.76

3
 Determination of Compacted Granular Layer Thickness on Soft Clay using Odemark’s Method for Design of Shallow Foundation

4 soft soil below footing for laying shallow

B=1.5m foundation using compacted sand bed.
Compacted sand thickness(m)

B=2.0m
B=2.5m References
3
Prandlt (1920) Lecture at the International Centre
for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.
2 Terzaghi, K.(1943) Bearing Capacity Theory
Theoretical soil mechanics, John Wiley &Sons,
1 New York.
Meyerhof, G. G. (1963) Some recent research on
the bearing capacity of foundations, Canadian
0 Geotechnical Journal 1: 16-26.
0 20 40 60
Angle of Internal Friction (°) Meyerhof, G.G. (1974) Ultimate Bearing Capacity
of Footings on Sand Layer Overlying Clay,
Fig. 4 Variation of sand thickness with angle of Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol. 11, pp. 223-
internal friction 229.
(Foundation load intensity = 80 kN/m2 and
cohesion c =20kN/m2) Meyerhof, G.G, and Hanna, A.M. (1978) Ultimate
Bearing capacity of Foundations on Layered Soil
5
under Inclined Load, Canadian Geotechnical
Compacted sand thickness (m)

Journal, Vol15, No.4, 565-572.

4
Madhav, M.R., and Sharma, J.S.N. (1991) Bearing
capacity of clay overlain by stiff soil, Journal of
3 Geotechnical Engineering, ASCE, 117(12):1941-
1948.
2
P.Ullidtz(1998) Modelling flexible pavement
ɸ=30° response and performance, pp-38-41.
1
ɸ=35° Bureau of Indian Standards IS: 6403-1981 Code of
ɸ=40° practice for determination of bearing capacity of
0
shallow foundations.
200 0 300 100
Load (kN)
Fig. 5 Variation of sand thickness with foundation
load intensity
(Cohesion c =20 kN/m2 & foundation width= 2 m)
6. Conclusions
It has been found that the depth of sand bed
increases with the increase in foundation load
intensity and decrease in cohesion of clay for a
typical size and type of shallow foundation.
Moreover, the depth of the sand bed was found to
decrease with the increase in angle of internal
friction of sand.
In addition, the depth of sand bed also increases
with the increase in footing width if the
foundation load intensity remains constant.
Keeping this in view, the proposed methodology
may be considered as a useful tool in the area of
ground improvement technique for replacement of

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