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 Ph.D. Instructor, Department of Civil Engineering-DECiv, Universidad Federal de Sao Carlos, Sao Carlos-SP, Brazil.

2 Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Patna, India

3 Professor, Department of Civil Engineering-DECiv, Universidad Federal de Sao Carlos, Sao Carlos-SP, Brazil.

4 Assistant Professor , Department of Civil Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and technology (SRMIST) Tiruchirappalli, TN, India.

5 Ph.D. Candidate, Research Scholar, Department of Civil Engineering, NIT Patna, India.

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. The stochastic analysis of bearing capacity problem indicates that conservative results can be obtained with Prandtl’s bearing capacity formula with consideration correlation length equal to the width of the footing.  In settlement analysis, elastic settlement of strip footing on spatially variable soil is presented. Locally averaged log normally distributed random fields of elastic modulus are generated to conduct probabilistic settlement analysis using RFEM and it is seen that there is very good agreement between the predicted and the actual value of settlement at small and large correlation lengths.  It 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 behavior.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Civil Engineering Infrastructures Journal
Volume 57, Issue 2
December 2024
Pages 383-403

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History

  • Receive Date: 21 June 2023
  • Revise Date: 03 October 2023
  • Accept Date: 13 November 2023

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