Perfomance of R.C. folded strip footing

There is an ever increasing need to construct new structures to house the’er increasing population. Traditional structures built by the beam-columnchnique have a major shortcoming of consuming large amounts of reinforcingeel. The market prices of reinforcing steels have dramatically soared in recentears both nationally and internationally. On the other hand, the traditionalaring wall system needs less steel reinforcement but consumes large amountsf steel in its foundations. Folded foundations have been used as an alternativeo the conventional flat shallow foundations. They can be geometrically shapedn elevation, triangular, cylindrical, parabolic, etc., for continuous footings suchs strip footing. A vital element in promoting the return back to the bearing wallystems is reducing the amount of steel in their foundations. This thesis is mucheeded in national project for youth housing. This project will be constructed inaany new towns in Egypt depending on bearing wall system. Therefore, theurpose of the current thesis is not just reducing the amount of reinforcing steelthe bearing wall foundations, but rather minimizing this amount throughhoosing the most effective strip footing shape. A well known concept inreinforced concrete is the ability of concrete to sustain high compressiveuresses, while the steel is only needed in tension zones. Consequently,inimizing or eliminating the tension zones on the tested foundation shapes ise main goal of the current research to minimize the needed steeleinforcements.The thesis will be conducted in two main phases. The experimental phasef the study will test different strip footing shapes underlain by medium denseand. The experimental testing program will verify the numerical studies andIarify the difficulties which may arise during the construction of the proposedfolded strip footings. The numerical phase of the study is performed using the.