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Shell foundations are often used to raise the carrying capacity of a structure on weak soils. In cases where large superstructure loads must be transferred to poorer soils, shell foundations are more cost-effective than ordinary shallow foundations. Advances in the study and design of shell-type foundations have shown their superiority over traditional footings in poorer soils. The current study aims to investigate shell shape’s influence on ultimate load capacity. Seven footing types’ models were created along with an appropriate testing box. The soil needed for the study was from the region north of Mosul city, classified as silt with low plasticity (sandy silt) soil. A laboratory model experimentally determined the ultimate load capacities for inverted and upright conical, inverted and upright pyramid, and hemispherical shell foundations on silty soil. The achieved results were associated with those for conventional flat squares and circles. According to the findings, the “upright conical” shell footing has a load capacity of 12.7 kN, higher than the other foundations, and its efficiency was 51%. When comparing foundations, the “upright pyramidal” shell footing has better settling characteristics and a settlement factor of 0.017. As the shell factor decreases, the shell foundation begins to behave more like a flat foundation, which reduces the maximum load capacity of the shell foundation.

The erosion of limestone and calcarenite ridges that existed parallel to the Mediterranean shoreline forms the calcareous sand (CS) formation at the surface layer of Egypt’s northern coast. The CS is often combined with broken shells which are considered geotechnically problematic due to their possible crushability and relatively high compressibility. In this research, CS samples collected from a site along the northern coast of Egypt are studied to better understand its behavior under normal and shear stresses. Reconstituted CS specimens with different ratios of broken shells (BS) are also investigated to study the effect of BS ratios on the soil mixture strength behavior. The strength is evaluated using laboratory direct-shear and one-dimensional compression tests (oedometer test). The CS specimens are not exposed to significant crushability even under relatively high-stress levels. In addition, a 3D finite element analysis (FEA) is presented in this paper to study the degradation offshore pile capacity in CS having different percentages of BS. The stress–strain results using oedometer tests are compared with a numerical model, and it gave identical matching for most cases. The effects of pile diameter and embedment depth parameters are then studied for the case study on the northern coast. Three different mixing ratios of CS and BS have been used, CS + 10% BS, CS + 30% BS, and CS + 50% BS, which resulted in a decrease of the ultimate vertical compression pile load capacity by 8.8%, 15%, and 16%, respectively.

The evaluation of variability in ultimate pile capacity from the load-settlement data is useful in the context of code calibration and reliability based design in pile foundations. This paper examines the applicability of two non-linear analytical methods to calculate the load-settlement response of piles using actual test data in terms of percentage deviation from the measured capacity. The degree of agreement associated with each method with respect to field test data is quantified using two different failure criteria (FHWA and Eurocode) for determination of the ultimate load of pile. The analytical methods are used to quantify the variability associated with the soil-pile interface parameters and ultimate capacity using Monte Carlo simulations, which is useful in load-resistance factored/reliability design of pile foundations. Study reveals that variability depends on the method of analysis, percent deviation of prediction from measured values and failure criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The erosion of limestone and calcarenite ridges that existed parallel to the Mediterranean shoreline forms the calcareous sand (CS) formation at the surface layer of Egypt's northern coast. The CS is often combined with broken shells which are considered geotechnically problematic due to their possible crushability and relatively high compressibility. In this research, CS samples collected from a site along the northern coast of Egypt are studied to better understand its behavior under normal and shear stresses. Reconstituted CS specimens with different ratios of broken shells (BS) are also investigated to study the effect of BS ratios on the soil mixture strength behavior. The strength is evaluated using laboratory direct-shear and one-dimensional compression tests (oedometer test). The CS specimens are not exposed to significant crushability even under relatively high-stress levels. In addition, a 3D finite element analysis (FEA) is presented in this paper to study the degradation offshore pile capacity in CS having different percentages of BS. The stress–strain results using oedometer tests are compared with a numerical model, and it gave identical matching for most cases. The effects of pile diameter and embedment depth parameters are then studied for the case study on the northern coast. Three different mixing ratios of CS and BS have been used, CS + 10% BS, CS + 30% BS, and CS + 50% BS, which resulted in a decrease of the ultimate vertical compression pile load capacity by 8.8%, 15%, and 16%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]