From a financial point of view, urbanization frequently enforces the clients to construct superstructures near the slopes, giving rise to increasing the risk of building instability. By conducting a series of small-scale plate load tests, this work aims to investigate the effects of installing geotextile reinforcement layers in sandy slope and reducing the apex angle of triangular shell strip footings. The results show considerable effect of using geotextile-reinforced layers and decreasing the apex angle on the ultimate bearing capacity of shell foundations. With increasing foundation distance from the slope, the adverse effect of the slope is reduced. However, as the distance decreases, the effect of reinforcement and apex angle is increased. For practical applications, empirical equations are also presented for determining the ultimate bearing capacity of the footings and scale effect as well. Finally, 3D numerical simulations are executed and compared with the experimental results.

This paper investigates the response of triangular shell strip footings situated on the sandy slope. A series of reduced-scale plate load tests were conducted to cover different parameters including three shell footing types with different apex angles in addition to a flat footing, four different distances for strip footings from the crest of the slope namely "edge distance" and reinforcement status (unreinforced and geotextile-reinforced statuses). Bearing capacity of shell footings adjacent to crest of the slope, bearing capacity ratio, shell efficiency factor, influence of apex angle on settlement of footings and the mechanism of slope failure are discussed and evaluated. Also, empirical equations for determination of the maximum bearing capacity of triangular shell strip footings are suggested. As a whole, it has been observed that decrease of shell's apex angle as good as increase of edge distance could significantly improve the bearing capacity. However, as the edge distance increases, the effect of apex angle on the bearing capacity got decreased. Also, it was found out that the beneficial effect of