Influence of Variation of Soil Properties in Bearing Capacity and Settlement Analysis of a Strip Footing Using Random Finite Element Method

KUMAR, Vinay; Burman, Avijit; Portelinha, F. H. M.; Kumar, Manish; Das, Guru

doi:10.22059/ceij.2023.360871.1930

Influence of Variation of Soil Properties in Bearing Capacity and Settlement Analysis of a Strip Footing Using Random Finite Element Method

Document Type : Technical Notes

Authors

¹ Department of Civil Engineering – DECiv, Universidade Federal de São Carlos - UFSCar, 235 Washington Luis Roadway, Mailbox 676, Zip Code: 13.565-905, Sao Carlos – SP, Brazil.

² Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Patna, India

³ SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Tiruchirappalli, TN, India, 621105

⁴ Research Scholar, Department of Civil Engineering, NIT Patna, India

10.22059/ceij.2023.360871.1930

Abstract

This study analyzes bearing capacity and settlement for a strip footing at the proposed NIT Patna Bihta campus site. It uses the Random Finite Element Method (RFEM) based software, which combines viscoplastic finite element analysis with random field theory. The program generates random realizations of the soil domain using local average subdivision method. The average response of the soil domain with variable properties is estimated using Monte-Carlo simulation. The study assumes random variation of soil parameters like cohesion, friction angle, and elastic modulus, while Poisson's ratio and dilation angle are treated as deterministic variables. The study also considers the cross correlation between cohesion and friction angle. For no cross correlation, theoretical predictions are made for mean and standard deviation of bearing capacity which are verified using Monte Carlo simulation based RFEM results. The probability of bearing capacity failure is also calculated using random finite element analysis and compared with theoretical results. In settlement analysis, elastic settlement of strip footing on spatially variable soil is presented. TIt is concluded that RFEM is a very suitable and efficient tool for investigation of the effect of variation of soil properties in determining the overall mean response for the bearing capacity and settlement behaviour.

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