PGE525 – Rock Mechanics

Prof.Dr. Cavit Atalar

#Section 6
Chapter 7 Foundations on Rock
Sivakugan, S., Shukla, S.K., and Das, B.M. 2013. Rock Mechanics, An Introduction, CRC Press

a INTRODUCTION
b SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS
c DEEP FOUNDATIONS
d FOUNDATION CONSTRUCTION AND TREATMENT
Foundation
‘Foundation’ refers to the load-carrying structural member of an engineering
system (e.g., building, bridge, road, runway, dam, pipeline,tower or machine)
below the ground surface as well as the earth mass that finally supports the
loads of the engineering system. Rock is a hard, compact, naturally occurring
earth material composed of one or more minerals and is permanent and
durable for engineering applications. Most rocks generally require blasting for
their excavation. In general, a site consisting of rocks is usually recognised as the
best foundation site for supporting structures because of the ability of rocks to
withstand much higher loads than the soils. In situ rocks carry different types of
discontinuities and planes of weakness such as joints, fractures, bedding planes
and faults and therefore, they are often nonhomogeneous and anisotropic in
their in situ properties at construction sites. This is the reason why it has not
been possible to analyse foundations on rock in a generalised form. This
chapter presents the description of shallow and deep foundations on rock to
explain their fundamentals and some commonly used approaches to estimate
the design value of their load-carrying capacity.
 SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS
A foundation is considered shallow if its depth (D) is generally less than or
equal to its width (B). Therefore, for a shallow foundation, D/B≤ 1.In practice,
the ratio D/B of a foundation can be greater than unity and still be treated as a
shallow foundation. A foundation can be described as shallow if its depth is
less than or equal to about 3.5 m below the ground surface.The most common
types of shallow foundations on rock and soil are spread footings and mats
(or rafts). A spread footing is simply an enlargement of a load-bearing wall or
column that makes it possible to spread the load of the engineering system or
structure over a large area of the rock and soil. The spread footing for
supporting a long wall is called strip footing, which may have a length-to-width
ratio more than 5. A mat or raft foundation is a continuous slab constructed
over the rock or soil bed to support an arrangement of columns and walls in a
row or rows. Mat foundations are preferred for weak soils and heavily jointed
and fractured rock masses that have low bearing capacities but that will have to
support high column and/or wall loads. A mat that supports two columns is
called combined footing. Mat foundations undergo significantly reduced
differential settlements compared to those for spread footings.
Depth of foundation
For shallow foundations resting on a rock, the depth of the rock, which is
weathered or fissured, is generally excluded in deciding the depth of
foundation in the rock. The foundation level is established at sufficient
depth so as to ensure that they do not get undermined, keeping in view the
continued erosion of the rock bed. In hard rocks, with ultimate compressive
strength of 10 MPa or above arrived at after considering the overall
characteristics of the rock, such as fissures, joints and bedding planes, the
minimum depth of foundation is taken as 0.6 m, whereas in all other types
of rock, it is 1.5 m.
Load-bearing capacity terms
The load per unit area at the base level of foundation that causes shear failure to occur
in the earth mass (soil or rock) is termed the ultimate bearing capacity (qu) of the
foundation. This capacity depends on the characteristics of the earth mass and is also
governed by the geometric dimensions of the foundation and its depth below the
ground surface. The safe bearing capacity (qs) is the pressure at the base level of
foundation that can be safely carried by the foundation without shear failure of the
earth mass. The load per unit area at the base level of foundation that causes
permissible or specified settlement of the engineering system is called the safe bearing
pressure (qρ). The lower of the safe bearing capacity and the safe bearing pressure is
called the allowable bearing pressure (qa). If the ultimate bearing capacity, safe bearing
capacity, safe bearing pressure and allowable bearing pressure are estimated by
deducting the effective overburden pressure at the base level of foundation, they are
termed the net ultimate bearing capacity (qnu), net safe bearing capacity (qns), net safe
bearing pressure (qnρ) and net allowable bearing pressure (qna), respectively. The value
of the net allowable bearing pressure (qna) is generally recommended for design of
shallow foundations.