In the present paper we study geometric structures associated with webs of hypersurfaces. We prove that with any geodesic (n+2)-web on an n-dimensional manifold there is naturally associated a unique projective structure and, provided that one of web
foliations is pointed, there is also associated a unique affine structure. The projective structure can be chosen by the claim that the leaves of all web foliations are totally geodesic, and the affine structure by an additional claim that one of web functions is affine. These structures allow us to determine differential invariants of geodesic webs and give geometrically clear answers to some classical problems of the web theory such as the web linearization and the Gronwall theorem.
We prove that any planar 4-web defines a unique projective structure in the plane in such a way that the leaves of the foliations are geodesics of this projective structure. We also find conditions for the projective structure mentioned above to cont
ain an affine symmetric connection, and conditions for a planar 4-web to be equivalent to a geodesic 4-web on an affine symmetric surface. Similar results are obtained for planar d-webs, d > 4, provided that additional d-4 second-order invariants vanish.
We find necessary and sufficient conditions for the foliation defined by level sets of a function f(x_{1},...,x_{n}) to be totally geodesic in a torsion-free connection and apply them to find the conditions for d-webs of hypersurfaces to be geodesic,
and in the case of flat connections, for d-webs (d > n) of hypersurfaces to be hyperplanar webs. These conditions are systems of generalized Euler equations, and for flat connections we give an explicit construction of their solutions.
We find an invariant characterization of planar webs of maximum rank. For 4-webs, we prove that a planar 4-web is of maximum rank three if and only if it is linearizable and its curvature vanishes. This result leads to the direct web-theoretical proo
f of the Poincar{e}s theorem: a planar 4-web of maximum rank is linearizable. We also find an invariant intrinsic characterization of planar 4-webs of rank two and one and prove that in general such webs are not linearizable. This solves the Blaschke problem ``to find invariant conditions for a planar 4-web to be of rank 1 or 2 or 3. Finally, we find invariant characterization of planar 5-webs of maximum rank and prove than in general such webs are not linearizable.