Identifying Shallow Foundation Failure Modes and Mechanisms Using Surveillance of a Transparent Granular Soil Surrogate

A transparent soil model of granular fused quartz is developed to study the mechanics of shallow foundations. Soil models, unreinforced and reinforced, prepared at relative densities 0.34 (loose) and 0.64 to 0.69 (medium dense) are tested using a rectangular footing (25 mm wide x 40 mm long) under strain-controlled loading. Digital Image Correlation is used to identify displacements of a seeded central plane parallel to footing width (B) and construct vector fields and contour plots. Fiber-reinforced soil model data analysis is inconclusive. For the unreinforced medium-dense soil, minimum and peak magnitude horizontal displacements occurred directly under the footing at the footing edges; whereas in the loose soil, peak magnitude horizontal displacement occurred directly under the footing. Vector and contour plots revealed that a medium dense soil gradually distributes smaller magnitude displacements over a broad area, in contradistinction to acute, highly localized displacements of larger magnitude in a loose soil.