Foundations

5. Foundations
Early tall building developments tended to be in areas such as Chicago and New York,
where, fortunately, ground conditions were conducive to carrying high building loads. As
these types of structures have spread to other parts of the world, more challenging
ground conditions have been encountered.

This has inevitably resulted in the adoption of various foundation solutions to reflect the
strength and compressibility of the underlying deposits. For example, while Chicago and
New York are underlain by high-strength rocks – Dolomite and Metamorphic,
respectively - Shanghai within the Yangtze River delta is underlain by over 100m of soft
sedimentary deposits and yet has super-tall buildings (at time of publication, Shanghai
World Financial Centre, at 492 m, is the tallest). London is to a large degree underlain by
stiff London Clay but, generally, tall buildings such as those at Canary Wharf are
supported by piles bored into the dense Thanet Sands found below the clay deposits.

A geotechnical specialist should always be consulted to advise on the foundation solution

for tall buildings.

Ground conditions
When founding on deposits of high strength and low compressibility, with evident spare
capacity in the ground to carry anticipated building loads, taking accurate measurement
of parameters is not of paramount importance. However, failure to properly sample, test
and evaluate many deposits can result in adopting inefficient and overly expensive
foundation solutions.

Over recent years, considerable effort has been expended on improving laboratory and
in-situ testing methods to more accurately measure parameters used in design.
Historically, much design work has relied on empirical correlations as an approximate
means of deriving a foundation solution but they can be generic and conservative,
resulting in an over-designed and relatively expensive sub-structure.

Prevailing ground conditions and a site investigation should point towards a basic
methodology for foundation design. The options range from fully piled solutions using
caissons or barrettes to transfer loads away from weak deposits towards deeper and
firmer strata, to a raft transferring all the building loads directly onto the strata
immediately below the building footprint.

In many cases engineers opt for one of these two basic approaches. The advent of better
modelling techniques, however, enables composite systems using a raft and piles in
combination to be used. Composite systems can better address uncertainties in the
ground and in the performance of individual elements of the foundation system. For
example, if the raft has a tendency to settle to a greater degree than anticipated, the
piles take a greater share of the load while, if the piles perform worse than expected, the
raft carries the additional load. To an extent, the combined system is self-compensating.

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Basements
The majority of tall buildings have deep basements associated with the overall
development; frequently extending well beyond the footprint of the main building.

Often the permanent groundwater table is well above basement level and, therefore,
significant uplift pressure can be generated. Outside of the main building footprint, the
basement either has to be held down (generally by tension piles or anchors) or the entire
area has to be under-drained.

To support the soil and water pressures exerted on the basement walls, lateral loads have to be
carried by slabs, unless permanent ground anchors are employed. The slabs need to exhibit
continuity across the full extent of the basement and building structure. Additionally, with
large spans, consideration has to be given to construction methodology to ensure shrinkage
and creep of the slabs does not lead to excessive displacement of the basement walls.

5.1 Ground investigation A major element in ensuring appropriate and efficient foundation design is undertaking a
thorough assessment and investigation of the ground conditions. General methods of
site investigation across the world often reflect a conservative consensus and are not
optimised to achieve the best design. In many countries this is balanced with the use of
empirical methods informed by real building performance. However empirical evidence
does have limitations:

„„ Observations and empirical derivations are limited to specific strata/stratigraphic

sequences of deposits.
„„ There is inherent uncertainty in using historical evidence to design buildings that are
often substantially taller and heavier than those previously built in the region.

Without an appropriate site investigation strategy, the likely consequence is a very
conservative foundation solution. Engineers should consider:

„„ Using a desk study to appreciate the regional geology, any potentially problematic
deposits and possible geo-hazards, such as cavities, buried channels and landslips.
„„ Conducting sufficient boreholes and trial pits to examine the variability of deposits
across the site.
„„ Taking boreholes deep enough to examine deposits significantly loaded by the
structure. A raft foundation will affect strata many tens of metres below founding
level. In weak deposits, piles may have to extend up to 80-100m below ground level.
„„ Obtaining good recovery of all material present. Too frequently in rotary boreholes,
core recovery can be only 50-60 %. While the 40-50 % lost is probably the weaker
material which will in fact dominate foundation performance, these deposits have
not been sampled and will not be tested.
„„ Using sampling methods that limit the disturbance of samples, for example, pushing
rather than hammering in tubes for cohesive deposits. For cored samples, select clean
sub-samples and wrap for testing as soon as the core is obtained, as a great many
materials deteriorate rapidly on exposure.

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5.4 Basement design It is common to construct basements in conjunction with tall buildings, often extending
well beyond the footprint of the tower itself. The issues relevant to this situation are
broadly similar to that for any basement work, namely:

„„ Retaining the surrounding deposits during excavation and post-construction.

„„ Ensuring movement of the ground beyond the basement footprint does not cause
damage to surrounding buildings and infrastructure.
„„ Controlling groundwater inflow and uplift pressures during construction.
„„ Providing a waterproof substructure.
„„ Either resisting water uplift pressures or under-draining the basement.
„„ Resisting any long-term heave exerted by the ground.

Elements that can be seen as relatively unique for tall buildings are:

„„ Ensuring slab continuity across the basement to resist lateral soil and water pressures.
„„ Controlling the impact of slab shrinkage and creep ‘pulling in’ the permanent
basement walls.
„„ Accommodating the significant load changes occurring at the perimeter of the tower
footprint - develop a transition zone, ensuring no abrupt change in raft/slab thickness
or reinforcement so as to prevent localised cracking.

Due to the many parameters set out above, it is difficult to give precise guidance on
issues relating to basement construction in tall buildings. However, general guidance on
the design of concrete basements can be obtained from The Concrete Centre publication:
Concrete Basements, CCIP-044 [3].

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