Laboratory and numerical study of the behavior of circular footing resting on sandy soils contaminated with oil under cyclic loading

Abstract

This research studies the behavior of circular foundations rested on the soils contaminated with gas oil and kerosene oil under cyclic loading. The final goal of this study was to determine the influence level of the foundation of the reservoirs rested on oil-contaminated sand due to their filling and discharging. The contaminated sand layers were mixed with different percentages of contamination from 2 to 6 of kerosene oil and gasoline. The effect of the contamination percentage, the value of the applied load, as well as the depth and type of contamination is investigated in this study. To validate the numerical studies performed by finite element software, small-scale laboratory tests is carried out. The results showed that the pollutants could affect the amount of final settlement and the number of loading cycles to reach this value. Increasing depth, the number of load cycles and the contamination content increased the final settlement and the number of loading cycles to reach that level increases. Numerical results showed a good compatibility in the load-settlement charts with the experimental results.