Experimental Investigation of Skirt Footing Subjected to Lateral Loading

The skirt foundation is one of the powerful types of foundations to resist the lateral loads produced from natural forces, such as earthquakes and wind action, or from the type of structures, such as oil platforms and offshore wind turbines.

This research experimentally investigated the response of skirted footing resting on sandy soil of different states to lateral applications of loads on a small-scale physical model manufactured for this purpose. The parameters studied are the distance between the footing and the skirt and its depth.

The results show that the presence of the skirt behind the footing loads to an increase in bearing load and a reduction in the lateral movement whereas the skirt near or adjacent to the footing edge causes maximum increases in bearing load and reduction in lateral movement, for skirted footing. The ratio between the wall distance and the width of the footing has no effect when it is greater than one. On the other hand, the state of the soil influences the bearing load and lateral movement with different ratio of wall distance and wall depth to the width of the footing, especially when the wall distance to the footing width is less than one and the state of the soil has no effect on the bearing load and lateral movement when the ratio is more than one.