NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS

I.M. Smith

University of Manchester, England, U.K.

INTRODUCTION

The numerical method which will be considered in these notes

is the finite element method. It is at present by far the most
widely used and versatile aid to obtaining solutions of linear
and nonlinear problems in foundation engineering. Alternative
methods, in particular boundary integral techniques, are
considered at length in other lectures to the Institute.

The first question to be answered must clearly be - why use

numerical methods in foundation engineering at all? In order to
answer it, some of the standard, classical solutions of soil
mechanics are reproduced below by numerical means. It is then
possible to see where modest extensions to current practice can
be achieved, for example in the areas of inhomogeneous soils,
complicated quasi-static loading states and cyclic and dynamic
loading.

However, what will also emerge is that in detail the

solutions produced by numerical means, using rather simple
constitutive assumptions, can be quite erroneous. For example
skeleton volume changes can be quite inaccurate and this can be
far more important in some problems than in others. The engineer
may have to ask if he is primarily interested in collapse loads,
or in deformations at working load.

The solutions presented below all assume that soil is a

continuum in which compatibility of strains always exists. Of
course bifurcations are known to occur in practice with
subsequent discontinuous deformation in localised zones. Since
167

J. B. MtlTtinl (ed.). Numericlll Methodl in Geomecluznicl. 167-185.

Copyri8ht CI 1982 by D. Reidel Publilhing Company.
168 1. M. SMITH

computations relating to this kind of material behaviour have not

yet been carried out, our interest will lie in how closely the
continuum solutions, perhaps involving strain-softening, can
reproduce observed behaviour.

Load-deflection and bearing capacity of shallow footings for

vertical loading will be considered in some detail. Since other
lectures to the Institute deal with structure/soil interaction,
only perfectly rigid structures will be assumed.

Combined loadings, leading to interaction diagrams, will

then be discussed.

Finally some problems of cyclic loading and shakedown, with

reference to offshore foundations, will be considered.

STANDARD SOIL MECHANICS SOLUTIONS

The solutions described in this lecture were obtained using

meshes of 8-node isoparametric quadrilateral elements. Reduced,
2x2, integration was used to evaluate the stiffness integrals.
No attempt is made here to justify this choice theoretically, the
interested reader being referred elsewhere (1). What is of
immediate concern is the nature of solutions obtained for
cohesive and cohesionless soils. The former are approximated as
elastic-plastic, yielding according to the von Mises criterion.
The latter are also approximated as simple elastic-plastic
although yielding according to the Mohr-Coulomb criterion and in
this case, both non-associated (zero volume change) and
associated (excessive plastic dilation) flow rules are considered.
Before shallow foundations in bearing are dealt with in detail,
retaining walls and slopes are considered.

RETAINING WALL SOLUTIONS

A comprehensive set of analyses has been conducted (2) for

both rough and smooth walls retaining cohesive and cohesionless
soils. For example, Figure 1 shows that the Rankine active and
passive failure states in cohesionless soil are very accurately
captured when the retaining wall is perfectly smooth.

For rough walls there are no "exact" solutions but Figure 2

shows a comparison between finite element solutions and other
approximate solutions due to Caquot and Kerisel (3). The finite
element solutions for this c-~ material also show that the
influence of dilatancy is negligible for a smooth wall but has a
considerable influence on failure loads for rough walls.