Abstract— The estimation of loadcarrying capacity of footing is the most important step in the design offoundation. The number of theoretical approaches, in-situ tests and laboratorymodel tests are available to find out the bearing capacity of footing. Howeverweak soil has always been a problem for geotechnical engineers. In order toincrease soil’s bearing capacity and to reduce footing settlement, reinforcedsoil foundations are used to solve engineering problems. Geosynthetics hasemerged as one of the best soil reinforcement. By making suitable arrangementof the geosynthetics, the bearing capacity and settlement resistance of thesoil can be improved. This paper attempts to review the recent researches thathave contributed to the improvement of bearing capacity of soil by usingreinforced soil foundations. From the above studies as discussed in this paperwe can conclude that layout and configuration of reinforcement play a vitalrole in bearing capacity improvement rather than the tensile strength of thegeosynthetic material. More studies can be conducted on the use of plasticmulti-directional reinforcements as for the same area, the multi-directionalreinforcing elements provide additional confinement to the soil mass due to thethree dimensional projections, compared to the conventional geosyntheticreinforcements such as geogrids.
Keywords: Reinforced soilfoundations, bearing capacity, geosynthetics.