Interaction between assembled 3D honeycomb cells produced from high density polyethylene and a cohesionless soil

Abstract

Assembled 3D high-density polyethylene honeycomb cells, providing confinement to arrest spreading of the soil in cells and creating relatively stiff bed that redistributes footing pressure over wider area, were used in the present study to enhance load-carrying capacity and to reduce settlement of base materials under a foundation. The effects of various test parameters including width, height, number of layers of the 3D honeycomb cells, vertical distance between layers of the cells and depth of stress zone of the foundation were studied. The test results indicated that considerable improvement in the load-carrying capacity (congruent to 3.0) and reduction in settlement of the foundation (congruent to 62%) were obtained with the implementation of the single layer of the 3D cells into cohesionless soils. The optimum effective distance between two layers of the 3D cells was 0.142 times the width of foundation, the ratio of effective width of 3D cells to the foundation was about 4.2 and the depth of influence stress zone of the foundation was about two times the width of the foundation.