Dimensional analysis and modelling laws for bearing capacity of reinforced and unreinforced soil

Abstract The success of any physical investigation depends on the judicious selection of what is to be observed as of primary importance, combined with a voluntary abstraction of the mind from those features which, however attractive they may appear, we are not yet sufficiently advanced in science to investigate with profit, wrote James Clerk Maxwell in 1871. Dimensional analysis provides a mathematical tool to reduce the number of variables. This paper investigates the role dimensional analysis can play in analysing and making model laws for the problem of bearing capacity of reinforced and unreinforced soil.