List of top Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering Questions asked in GATE Civil Engineering

A 6 m \(\times\) 6 m square footing constructed in clay is subjected to a vertical load of 2500 kN at its centre. The base of the footing is 2 m below the ground surface, as shown in the figure. The footing is made of 2 m thick concrete. The ground water table is at a great depth. Considering Terzaghi's bearing capacity theory, the factor of safety of footing against the bearing capacity failure is ....... (rounded off to 2 decimal places). 

The standard plasticity chart for the classification of a fine-grained soil is shown in the figure. As per the Indian standard soil classification system, X represents
A single pile with 450 mm diameter has been driven into a homogeneous clay layer, which has an undrained cohesion (\(c_u\)) of 20 kPa and unit weight of 18 kN/m³. The ground water table is found to be at the surface of the clay layer. The adhesion factor (\(\alpha\)) of the soil is 0.95 and bearing capacity factor (\(N_c\)) is 9. The pile is supporting a column load of 144 kN with a factor of safety of 3.0 against ultimate axial pile capacity in compression. The required embedment depth of the pile (in m) is ......... (rounded off to the nearest integer).

Which of the following statements is/are INCORRECT?
 

A 60 cm diameter well completely penetrates a confined aquifer of permeability \( 5 \times 10^{-4} \, {m/s} \). The length of the strainer (spanning the entire thickness of the aquifer) is 10 m. The drawdown at the well under steady state pumping is 1.0 m. Assume that the radius of influence for this pumping is 300 m.
The discharge from the well (in litres per minute) is ......... (round off to the nearest integer).
A designer used plate load test to obtain the value of the bearing capacity factor \( N_t \). A circular plate of 1 m diameter was placed on the surface of a dry sand layer extending very deep beneath the ground. The unit weight of the sand is 16.66 kN/m\(^3\). The plate is loaded to failure at a pressure of 1500 kPa.
Considering Terzaghi's bearing capacity theory, the bearing capacity factor \( N_t \) is ......... (round off to the nearest integer).