Stiffness and Capacity of Foundations on Layered Clays

This paper presents the laboratory results for the ultimate bearing capacity for layered clays. The claysconsist of a thin layer of stiff crust lying over a thick layer of soft clay which are both consolidatedfrom the same batch of kaolin mix. The two samples were consolidated under different pressure toachieve different undrain shear strength and were compiled thereafter. Aluminium footings with diameter 20, 40, 60 and 80mm were utilized respectively to verify the correlation between footing diameter and depth of the stiff soil. To obtain the soils’ undrain shear strength value, CPT and T-bar tests were conducted respectively. The experiment data was compared with the result from predictions from previous studies results conducted by Brown & Meyerhof and Merifield and finite elementsimulation using Plaxis.