Georisk: Assessment and Management of Risk for

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Experimental study of a shallow foundation on

spatially variable soils

C.L. Wu , J.H. Li & J.C. Liu

To cite this article: C.L. Wu , J.H. Li & J.C. Liu (2020): Experimental study of a shallow foundation
on spatially variable soils, Georisk: Assessment and Management of Risk for Engineered Systems
and Geohazards, DOI: 10.1080/17499518.2020.1806333

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GEORISK
https://doi.org/10.1080/17499518.2020.1806333

Experimental study of a shallow foundation on spatially variable soils

C.L. Wu, J.H. Li and J.C. Liu
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The influence of soil variability on the bearing capacity of a foundation has been simulated by Received 20 January 2020
various numerical methods. Due to the lack of repeatable tests in spatially variable soil, the Accepted 19 July 2020
effect of the spatial pattern on the failure mechanism of the foundation in a spatially variable
KEYWORDS
soil is physically unclear. This study aims to investigate how the spatial pattern affects the failure Shallow foundation; bearing
mechanism and the bearing capacity of a shallow foundation by the laboratory tests conducted capacity; random field;
on spatially variable physical soil models. Four physical models were carefully prepared with spatially variable soil;
accurately controlled shear strength according to the random fields of shear strength, which uncertainty
enable the comparison to classical bearing capacity theory. The failure mechanism and the
bearing capacity were observed and compared to Terzaghi’s theory in homogeneous soils.
Results show that the shear failure plane mainly developed in weak soils, which results in an
asymmetric failure mechanism. This different failure mechanism leads to a very different bearing
capacity of a foundation on variable soils compared to that on homogeneous soils of the same
mean shear strength. This study paves a way towards a safe and economical foundation design
by considering the effect of spatial variation in soils.

1. Introduction piers and investigated the influence of variable soil stiff-

Soil inherently varies over space due to a combination of
geologic, environmental, and physical–chemical process
(Chiasson et al. 1995; Dasaka and Zhang 2012; Ching
and Phoon 2013; Lloret-Cabot et al. 2014; Li et al.
2015a). The influence of spatial variability on the bearing
capacity of a shallow foundation has been studied by
analytical methods (Cherubini 2000), field tests (Stue-
dlein and Holtz 2012; Stuedlein et al. 2012), and numeri-
cal simulations (Nobahar and Popescu 2000; Griffiths
and Fenton 2001; Griffiths et al. 2002; Fenton and
Griffiths 2003; Popescu et al. 2005; Ahmed and Soubra
2012; Cassidy et al. 2013; Li et al. 2016). For example,
Cherubini (2000) evaluated the reliability of bearing
capacity of shallow foundation on spatially variable
soils and found a smaller scale of fluctuation would
lead to a smaller probability of failure. Griffiths and Fen-
ton (2001) identified the fundamental role of similarity
between the scale of variability of soils (i.e. scale of
fluctuation and autocorrelation length) and the width
of a footing by combing finite element analysis with ran-
dom field theory. They found that the bearing capacity
factor decreases dramatically when the coefficient of
variation is high. Stuedlein and Holtz (2012) performed
full-scale field load tests for spread footings on aggregate
ness and strength. Overall, these studies draw the follow-
ing conclusions: (i) the bearing capacity and the failure
mechanism of the foundation on a spatially variable
soil can be much different with that on a homogeneous
soil; (ii) the bearing capacity and the shear failure mech-
anism are closely related with the spatial pattern of
spatially variable soils. Although the effect of spatial
variability has been acknowledged by many studies,
further effect of spatial pattern on the bearing capacity
of a shallow foundation is hard to validate physically
because of the lack of repeatable tests.
Until recently, researchers tried to build physical
models of spatially variable soil which were used for lab-
oratory tests. Chakrabortty et al. (2008) firstly con-
structed deposit models of heterogeneous sand to
conduct centrifuge liquefaction tests of heterogeneous
soil successfully. Garzon et al. (2015) manufactured a
small scale soil model with spatially varied liquid limit
using nine types of reconstituted clay manually. This
technique was later employed by Chenari et al. (2018,
2019) to reconstitute heterogeneous models considering
soil inherent variability of shear strength in the labora-
tory. Pua et al. (2018) presented the development of a
3D clay printer which was capable of constructing het-
erogeneous clay models with spatial variability. These

CONTACT J.H. Li jinhui.li@hit.edu.cn Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, 518034,
People’s Republic of China
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. WU ET AL.

pioneer works provide basis for physically simulating

heterogeneous soils, based on which the influence of
spatial variability on the bearing capacity was explored.
For example, Garzon et al. (2018) investigated the
effect of soil liquid limit variability on the bearing
capacity of a shallow foundation. The influence of the
soil strength, especially the spatial pattern of soil strength
on the failure mechanism and bearing capacity has not
been physically investigated.
The objective of this study is to investigate the failure
mechanism and bearing capacity of a shallow foundation
on a spatially variable soil through physical experiments,
addressing how the spatial pattern affecting the failure
mechanism and the bearing capacity. Four physical
models are carefully prepared with accurately controlled
shear strength at each location of the models. In this way,
the failure mechanism and the bearing capacity can be Figure 1. Particle size distribution.
determined and compared to that of the classical theory
in homogeneous soils. 3. Test apparatus
3.1. Physical model preparation
2. Materials
A specially designed transparent box is manufactured to
The soil was taken from an excavation site of residual soil prepare physical models of spatially variable soil. The
in Bazhou, Hebei Province, China. The physical proper- box is 600 mm long, 200 mm wide, and 300 mm high
ties of the soil were measured and shown in Table 1. The with 30 pairs of vertical slots in the front and back
particle size distribution is shown in Figure 1. sides (see Figure 3). Along each pair of slots, a thin
Soils with different water content lead to different iron plate can be inserted to separate a self-contained
shear strength. To investigate the variation of shear space in which different types of soils can be prepared.
strength with water content, five homogeneous soil The width between the two slots is 20 mm. The soils
specimens with water contents of 8%, 12%, 16%, 20%, with different water contents were filled layer by layer.
and 24% were compacted at 85% relative compaction Once a certain layer was filled completely, the iron plates
by the Standard Proctor compaction method. Direct were taken out and the soil layer was compacted and
shear tests with the shearing rate of 0.01 mm/min scraped. Then the iron plates were inserted again along
under undrained conditions were conducted. The shear
strength of the five soil specimens under vertical pressure
of 25 kPa were obtained from the direct shear test and
shown in Figure 2. Results show that the shear strength
decreases with increasing water content. The Pearson
coefficient of correlation between the shear strength
and the water content is −0.99 which indicates that the
shear strength is closely correlated with the water con-
tent of the soil. Hence, soils with water contents of
12%, 16%, 20%, and 24% were used to prepare spatially
variable soils in the model. The total stress strength par-
ameters (i.e. undrained cohesion and total stress friction
angle) of the four types of soils were obtained and listed
in Table 2.

Table 1. Physical properties of the soil.

Saturated Maximum Optimum Liquid
Void water dry density water limit Plastic Figure 2. Variation of shear strength with water content (homo-
ratio content (%) (g/cm3) content (%) (%) limit (%)
geneous soil with 85% relative compaction under the vertical
0.52 32 1.725 16.3 35.0 16.0 pressure of 25 kPa).
 GEORISK: ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF RISK FOR ENGINEERED SYSTEMS AND GEOHAZARDS 3

Table 2. Strength parameters of the soil under various water a normal distribution with a mean value of 61 kPa and
contents. a standard deviation of 18 kPa. It should be noted that
Water content (%) Cohesion c (kPa) Friction angle w (°) a lognormal distribution can also be used to avoid any
12 64 28 possible negative values which may present in a normal
16 49 24
20 33 23 distribution. The autocorrelation function follows an
24 15 21 exponential model with scale of fluctuation of 120 mm
in vertical direction and 300 mm in horizontal direction.
A realisation of the random field of shear strength is
the vertical slots to prepare the next soil layer. The height shown in Figure 4. The purpose of the generated random
of each layer is 20 mm with 85% relative compaction. field is to provide a spatial correlation pattern for the fol-
Finally, the height of the physical model is 240 mm. In lowing model tests. The strength values of the soils in the
this way, a physical soil model with designated spatial tests are not necessarily identical to the generated ran-
variability can be formed in the laboratory. dom fields.
To reflect the inherent correlation among various This random field was then simplified using four
locations, the spatial pattern of the physical soil model types of soils with water contents of 12%, 16%, 20%,
is designed according to random field theory. In this and 24%. The principle of simplification is to maintain
study, a random field of shear strength was first gener- the spatial correlation of the soil strength at different
ated using covariance matrix decomposition method locations. Figure 5 shows the simplified random field
(El-Kadi and Williams 2000). The random field follows that can be realised physically with different types of

Figure 3. Soil box for preparing physical model.

4 C. WU ET AL.
Figure 4. Random field of shear strength.
soils. The relatively strong soil at the left side is consistent
with the structure in the generated random field. It
should be noted that the continuous change of soil
strength in the random field cannot be reflected in the
test because there are only four types of soils used.
This limitation can be overcome by using more types
of soils in future.
A shallow foundation is seated in the middle of the
physical soil model as shown in Figure 5. The foun-
dation is 200 mm long (L), 50 mm wide (B), and
20 mm high (H ). The boundary of the box is 5.5B
away from the foundation, which is far enough to
avoid any boundary effects (Cerato and Lutenegger
2007; Sahu et al. 2016). The scale of fluctuation of
the soil is six times the width of the foundation in
horizontal direction and 2.4 times in vertical direction,
which is common in practice.
3.2. Soil deformation measurement system
A deformation measurement system is designed based
on Particle Image Velocity (PIV) technology to measure
the displacements of the spatially variable soils. The
deformation measurement system mainly includes a
Figure 5. Simplified random field of shear strength with soils of different water contents.
digital camera, identifiable soil texture, and control
points. A digital camera with 18 megapixels was fixed
in front of the soil box as shown in Figure 6. The lens
of the camera is perpendicular to the vertical plane of
the box to minimise possible distortion. The digital cam-
era was connected to a computer and took photos every
two minutes during the test. A lot of red pigment was
added in the soil to form soil texture. Based on the Geo-
PIV program developed by White et al. (2003), the dis-
placement of surrounding soils were measured and
calculated during the loading process.
3.3. Loading system
The loading system mainly includes a hydraulic jack, a
reaction frame, and an oil pressure gauge. The hydraulic
jack is used to provide load at designated levels. The
reaction frame is used to transmit the applied load to
the foundation. The settlement of the foundation is
measured by two dial indicators. The measurement
range of the dial indicators is 50 mm and the accuracy
is 0.01 mm.
Maintained load test is conducted to investigate the
influence of the soil spatial variability. The load at the
 GEORISK: ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF RISK FOR ENGINEERED SYSTEMS AND GEOHAZARDS 5

Figure 7 shows the variation of the foundation settle-

ment with increasing loads. The load-settlement curve
has no plunge which often observed in general shear
failure. Hence, the failure mechanism of local shear
failure is suspected, which will be further discussed
in the following section. The bearing capacity is
359 kPa if the load corresponding to a settlement of
10% foundation width is considered as the bearing
capacity (ASTM D1194-94 2003).

Figure 6. Experimental setup.

first stage is 104 kPa. When the settlement of the foun-

dation is equal to or less than 0.1 mm/h for two consecu-
tive hours, a further load of 52 kPa is applied. The test
ends when the settlement of the foundation is larger
than or equal to 20 mm, which means the top surface
of the foundation is level with the soil surface. The dis-
placements of the soil model under various applied
loads can be measured by the deformation measurement
system.

4. Results
4.1. Load test on homogeneous soil
The test was first conducted on a homogeneous soil
as a benchmark. The soils with water content of
16% were compacted at 85% relative compaction.

Figure 8. Displacements of homogeneous soil model under var-

Figure 7. Load-settlement curve for homogeneous soil model. ious applied loads.
6 C. WU ET AL.

The equations developed by Terzaghi (1943) is bearing capacity (i.e. 359 kPa) agrees well with the
employed here to determine the bearing capacity for a theoretical value. The minor difference may attribute
local shear failure theoretically, to the compression of the soil, which does not satisfy
the assumption of no soil volume change in the clas-
1
fu = gBNg∗ + gDNq∗ + c∗ Nc∗ sical theory.
2

⎫
∗ w∗ ⎪
⎪
The deformation of the surrounding soil is symmetric
Nq∗ = eptanw · tan2 45◦ + ⎪
2 ⎬ as shown in Figure 8. When the applied load is small the
Nc∗ = (Nq∗ − 1) cot w∗ deformation is mainly downward. As the load increases
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎭ to 259 kPa, the soils deform laterally. No soil heave has
Ng∗ = 1.8Nc∗ tan2 w∗

where fu is the bearing capacity, γ is the soil weight, B is

the width of foundation, D is the embedment depth of
foundation, N∗q , N∗c , and N∗g are the bearing capacity fac-
tors, c is the soil cohesion, w is the friction angle, c∗ is the
modified cohesion, and w∗ is the modified friction angle.
To calculate the corresponding values N∗q , N∗c , and N∗g for
local shear failure, the values c and w should be replaced
by the modified c∗ and w∗ following the suggestion of
Terzaghi (1943).
⎫
2 ⎪
∗
c = c ⎪
⎬
3

w∗ = tan−1 tan w ⎪
2 ⎪
⎭
3

The minor contribution of soil weight to the bearing

capacity can be ignored because the foundation width
is small. The embedment depth of the shallow foun-
dation is 0. The contact between the steel foundation
and the soil can be regarded as smooth. The cohesion
and fiction angle of the homogeneous soil are 49 kPa
and 24°, respectively. The theoretical bearing capacity
is then calculated, which is 392 kPa. The measured

Figure 9. Comparison of load-settlement curve for spatially vari- Figure 10. Displacements of spatially variable soil model in
able soil model and for homogeneous soil. Figure 5 under various applied loads.
 GEORISK: ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF RISK FOR ENGINEERED SYSTEMS AND GEOHAZARDS
been observed throughout the test, which further
confirms the local shear failure mechanism.
4.2. Load test on spatially variable soil
A spatially variable physical soil model is prepared
according to Figure 5 and the loading is applied. The
load-settlement curve for the foundation resting on the
spatially variable soil is shown in Figure 9. The settle-
ment of the foundation on the spatially variable soil
physical model is much larger than that on the homo-
geneous soil physical model. This difference reveals
that the foundation on this spatially variable soil has a
smaller bearing capacity than that on the homogeneous
soil. According to the settlement criterion of 0.1B, the
bearing capacity for the spatially variable soil model is
260 kPa, which is 28% smaller than that for the homo-
geneous soil model.
The displacements of the spatially variable soil
model under various loads are shown in Figure 10.
When the load is small, only the soil directly beneath
the foundation moved downwards slightly. As the
load increases to 207 kPa, lateral displacements appear.
When the load increases to 311 kPa, both the vertical
Figure 11. Simplified random fields of shear strength of BS-model and BW-model.
7
and the lateral displacements increase significantly.
The soil deformation at the right side is obviously lar-
ger than that at the left side, showing an asymmetric
characteristic. This asymmetric deformation closely
relates with the spatial pattern of the random soil
model, in which the soil at the right side is much
weaker than that the left side. The deformation mainly
develops in the weaker soil, which confirms the
numerical inference (Griffiths and Fenton 2001;
Griffiths et al. 2002; Li et al. 2015b).
To compare the experimental results with that of
the numerical method, a finite element model is
established following Li et al. (2015b). The spatial pat-
tern of the soil in the numerical model is the same
with the experiments as shown in Figure 5. The
strength parameters corresponding to the four types
of soils are shown in Table 2. The elastic response
of soil is defined by Young’s modulus and Poisson’s
ratio. The Young’s modulus of each soil element is
assumed as 50 times the local cohesion, which varies
within the range of 750–3200 kPa (Hu and Randolph
1998). The Poisson’s ratio is set as 0.49 to simulate
undrained conditions as well as to ensure numerical
stability (Taiebat and Carter 2000). The load-
8 C. WU ET AL.
Figure 12. Load-settlement curves for different soil models.
settlement curve obtained from the numerical calcu-
lation is shown in Figure 9. The trend from the
numerical model agrees well with the experimental
results. When the load is relatively small, the settle-
ment of the numerical model is slightly larger than
Figure 13. Displacements of BS-model and BW-model.
the physical model. This may attribute to the small
Young’s modulus used in the numerical model.
4.3. Effect of spatial pattern
To investigate the effect of spatial pattern on the failure
mechanism and the bearing capacity, another two
spatially variable soil models were prepared as shown in
Figure 11. The two physical soil models have the same
statistical parameters with the spatially variable soil
model in Figure 5. As shown in Figure 11(a), the soil
directly below the foundation is comparatively strong.
This model is marked as BS-model. As shown in Figure
11(b), the soil directly below the foundation is compara-
tively weak. This model is marked as BW-model.
The load-settlement curves for the foundation resting
on different physical models are shown in Figure 12.
Under the same load, the settlements of the foundation
on the spatially variable soil model in Figure 5 and the
BW-model in Figure 11(b) are larger than that on the
homogeneous soil model. In particular, the load-settle-
ment curve for the BW-model decreases abruptly,
 GEORISK: ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF RISK FOR ENGINEERED SYSTEMS AND GEOHAZARDS
indicating that the foundation on the BW-model can
penetrate the soil quickly.
The foundation on the BS-model has the maximal
bearing capacity, and the foundation on the BW-model
has the minimal bearing capacity. According to the
settlement criterion of 0.1B, the measured bearing
capacities for the BS-model and the BW-model are 480
and 107 kPa, respectively. The bearing capacity for the
BW-model is 78% smaller than that for the BS-model
although their mean shear strength is the same. It indi-
cates that the spatial pattern of the soil significantly
affects the bearing capacity of the foundation. This
finding confirms that the numerical results from
Griffiths and Fenton (2001) and Stuedlein (2017)
which indicates that different spatial patterns can lead
to quite different bearing capacities.
The displacements of the BS-model and the BW-
model at the final loading stage are shown in Figure
13. Owing to the high strength of the soil directly
beneath the foundation, the deformation of the BS-
model is small. In contrast, the deformation of the
BW-model is much larger due to the low strength of
the soil directly beneath the foundation. Moreover, the
lateral displacements of the BW-model are very small.
The results indicate that the bearing capacities for the
spatially variable soils are significantly affected by the
spatial pattern of the soil strength, especially the strength
of the soil beneath the foundation. This noticeable influ-
ence arises from the huge difference among the failure
mechanism of the spatially variable soils which even
shows different modes of shear failure.
The variable spatial pattern of soils on the bearing
capacity also brings the uncertainties on the foundation
design. Based on Terzaghi’s theory, the bearing capacities
for the homogeneous soil with water contents of 12%,
16%, 20%, and 24% are 614, 392, 253, and 106 kPa,
respectively. The bearing capacities for the spatially vari-
able soil models are generally lie in the range between
106 and 614 kPa. However, the design will be misleading
if only considering the soil directly beneath the foun-
dation. For example, the bearing capacity for the BS-
model (i.e. 480 kPa) is much smaller than that for the
model with the same strong soil underneath (i.e.
614 kPa). The surrounding weak soils lead to a smaller
bearing capacity, which should be carefully considered
in practice.
5. Conclusions
An experimental method to prepare spatially varied
soil models is presented in this study. Three spatially
variable soil models are physically prepared with con-
trolled shear strength by four kinds of soil elements.
9
Loading tests on these soil models are conducted to
investigate the failure mechanism and the bearing
capacity. The effect of spatial pattern on the failure
mechanism is demonstrated. The following con-
clusions can be drawn:
(1) The deformation in the spatially variable soil
develops mainly in weak soils and shows an
obvious asymmetric characteristic. The bearing
capacity of the foundation on the spatially vari-
able soil is very different from that on the homo-
geneous soil.
(2) The spatial pattern of the soil under a foundation
affects the bearing capacity significantly. The
foundation design can be misleading if the effect
of spatial variation in spatially variable soils is
ignored.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number
51979067] and Shenzhen Peacock Technology Innovation
Project [grant number KQJSCX20180328165808449].
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