الفهرس 
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Abstract
The work presented in this thesis is concerned with the numerical and
experimental analyses of soil-reinfrcement model systems under three
dimensional conditions. The case of a surface rigid isolated footing
subjected to a uniform vertical load and resting on a space homogeneous
elastic foundation soil with and without horizontal reinforcement layers was
studied. The three dimensional photoelasticity and finite element techniques
were used as an experimental and theoretical methods of analysis,
respectively.
In the experimental work, the elastic foundation soil was represented
by photoelastic material (gelatine) and aluminum foils were used as
reinforcements. In the theoretical work, a computer program which utilized
the finite element technique was developed to predict the displacements,
strains and the stresses in the reinforced soil models. It comprised linear
elastic representations of the stress-strain behaviour. All studied models in
both experimental and theoretical analyses were tested under the same
footing stress and only the depth, length, number, thickness and surface
roughness of the reinforcement layers were varied to study the effect of
reinforcement on the system behaviour.
The results of all reinforced models were compared with those of the
without reinforcement model to study the effect of reinforcement. The
experimental results of all studied models were compared with the
corrosponding theoretically predicted results in order to assess the validity
of the theoretical results. The distributions of the normal and shear stresses
at different depths below the footing for all studied models were obtained.
Also the vertical displacements for the model elements as well as the footing
settlement were studied. The effect of the depth, length ratios and the
number of reinforcement layers on the behaviour of model systems were
studied. The effect of the thickness and surface roughness of the
reinforcements were also obtained. .