The aspect ratio of the shallow footing is a key parameter affecting the bearing capacity performances. However, the recommendations of previous studies exhibit notable inconsistencies among themselves for the unreinforced condition, and no numerical study in the literature has investigated the effect of aspect ratio under geocell-reinforced condition. This pioneer study investigates the influence of footing aspect ratio and soil relative density on the ultimate bearing capacity, shape factor, improvement factor, and failure mechanism of unreinforced and geocell-reinforced footings resting on sandy soils. A total of 36 rigorous three-dimensional finite element analyses were performed and validated against physical model tests. The analyses considered footings with aspect ratios ranging from 1 to 10 placed on loose and dense sands. The results showed that geocell reinforcement substantially improves footing performance by increasing bearing pressures, ultimate bearing capacities, stiffness of the footing pressure versus footing settlement ratio curves and shape factor values. Improvement factors were observed to lie between 1.12 and 2.56, with square footings showing the maximum improvement, and the magnitude of improvement increasing as the relative density increased. Furthermore, for unreinforced footings, the maximum shape factor occurred at aspect ratio of 2, whereas in geocell-reinforced conditions, the peak shifted to aspect ratio of 1. The shape factor values also increased with increasing relative density. Moreover, it was observed that the aspect ratio influences both the failure surface geometry and reinforcement mechanism of geocell.
Gürbüz et al. (2026) studied this question.