Foundation Settlement and

Soil Compression

Technical University of Kenya

Department of civil engineering
Dr. Eng. Alphonce A. Owayo.
Settlement of a foundation
Probably the most difficult of the problems that a soils engineer is
asked to solve is the accurate prediction of the settlement of a
loaded foundation. The problem is in two distinct parts: (i) the value
of the total settlement that will occur, and (ii) the rate at which this
value will be achieved. When a soil is subjected to an increase in
compressive stress due to a foundation load the resulting soil
compression consists of elastic compression, primary compression
and secondary compression.
Elastic compression
This compression is usually taken as occurring immediately after
the application of the foundation load. Its vertical component causes
a vertical movement of the foundation (immediate settlement) that
in the case of a partially saturated soil is mainly due to the
expulsion of gases and to the elastic bending reorientation of the
soil particles. With saturated soils immediate settlement effects are
assumed to be the result of vertical soil compression before there is
any change in volume.
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Primary compression
The sudden application of a foundation load, besides causing elastic
compression, creates a state of excess hydrostatic pressure in
saturated soil. These excess pore water pressure values can only be
dissipated by the gradual expulsion of water through the voids of
the soil which results in a volume change that is time dependent. A
soil experiencing such a volume change is said to be consolidating
and the vertical component of the change is called the consolidation
settlement.
Secondary compression
Volume changes that are more or less independent of the excess
pore water pressure values cause secondary compression. The
nature of these changes is not fully understood but it is apparently
due to a form of plastic flow resulting in a displacement of the soil
particles. Secondary compression effects can continue over long
periods of time and, in the consolidation test, become apparent
towards the end of the primary compression stage: due to the
thinness of the sample, the excess pore water pressures are soon 3
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Dissipated and it may appear that the main part of secondary
compression occurs after primary compression is completed. This
effect is absent in the case of an in situ clay layer because the large
dimensions involved mean that a considerable time is required
before the excess pore pressures drain away. During this time the
effects of secondary compression are also taking place so that, when
primary compression is complete, little, if any, secondary effect is
noticeable. The terms 'primary' and 'secondary' are therefore seen to
be rather arbitrary divisions of the single, continuous consolidation
process. The time relationships of these two factors will be entirely
different if they are obtained from two test samples of different
thicknesses.
Immediate settlement
Cohesive soils
If a saturated clay is loaded rapidly, the soil will be deformed during
the load application and excess hydrostatic pore pressures are set
up. This deformation occurs with virtually no volume change, and
due to the low permeability of the clay, little water is squeezed out 4
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of the voids. Vertical deformation due to the change in shape is the
immediate settlement. This change in shape is illustrated in Fig. la,
where an element of soil is subjected to a vertical major principal
stress increase Δ𝜎1 , which induces an excess pore water pressure,
Δ𝑢. The lateral expansion causes an increase in the minor principal
stress, Δ𝜎3 . The formula for immediate settlement of a flexible
foundation was provided by Terzaghi (1943) and is

Fig. 1 Compressive deformation.

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 Table 1

which gives the immediate settlement at the corners of a rectangular

footing, length L and width B. In the case of a uniformly loaded,
perfectly flexible square footing, the immediate settlement under its
centre is twice that at its corners. Various values for Np are given in
Table 1. By the principle of superposition it is possible to determine the
immediate settlement under any point of the base of a foundation
(Example 2). A spoil heap or earth embankment can be taken as flexible
and to determine the immediate settlement of deposits below such a
construction the coefficients of Table 1 should be used.
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Foundations are generally more rigid than flexible and tend to impose a
uniform settlement which is roughly the same value as the mean value
of settlement under a flexible foundation. The mean value of settlement
for a rectangular foundation on the surface of a semi-elastic medium is
given by the expression:

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Skempton (1951) suggests the values for Ip given in Table 2.,
Table 2

Immediate settlement of a thin clay layer

The coefficients of Tables 1 and 2 only apply to foundations on
deep soil layers. Vertical stresses extend to about 4B below a
strip footing and the formulae, strictly speaking, are not
applicable to layers thinner than this, although little error is
incurred if the coefficients are used for layers of thicknesses
greater than 2.0B. A drawback of the method is that it can only
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be applied to a layer immediately below the foundation. For cases
when the thickness of the layer is less than 4.0B a solution is possible
with the use of coefficients prepared by Steinbrenner (1934), whose
procedure was to determine the immediate settlement at the top of the
layer (assuming infinite depth) and to calculate the settlement at the
bottom of the layer (again assuming infinite depth) below it. The
difference between the two values is the actual settlement of the layer.
The total immediate settlement at the corner of a rectangular
foundation on an infinite layer is

The values of the coefficient Ip (when μ = 0.5) are given in Fig. 2c.
To determine the settlement of a point beneath the foundation the area
is divided into rectangles that meet over the point (the same procedure
used when determining vertical stress increments by Steinbrenner's
method). The summation of the settlements of the corners of the
rectangles gives the total settlement of the point considered.
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This method can be extended to determine the immediate settlement of
a clay layer which is at some depth below the foundation. In Fig. 2b the
settlement of the lower layer (of thickness H2 - H1) is obtained by first
determining the settlement of a layer extending from below the
foundation that is of thickness H2 (using E2); from this value is
subtracted the imaginary settlement of the layer H1 (again using E2).

Fig. 2 Immediate settlement of thin clay layer.

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It should be noted that the settlement values obtained by this method
are for a perfectly flexible foundation. Usually the value of settlement
at the centre of the foundation is evaluated and reduced by a rigidity
factor (generally taken as 0.8) to give a mean value of settlement that
applies over the whole foundation.
EXAMPLE.1

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EXAMPLE 2
The plan of a proposed spoil heap is shown in Fig. 3a. The tip will be
about 23m high and will sit on a thick, soft alluvial deposit (E= 15
MN/m2). It is estimated that the eventual uniform bearing pressure on
the soil will be about 300 kN/m2. Estimate the immediate settlement
under the point A at the surface of the soil.
Solution
The procedure is to divide the plan area into a number of rectangles,
the corners of which must meet at the point A; in Fig.3b it is seen that
three rectangles are required. As the structure is flexible and the soil
deposit is thick, the coefficients of Table 1 should be used:

Fig. 3 Example 2.

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The effect of depth
Fox (1948) showed that for deep foundations (z > B) the calculated
immediate settlements are more than the actual ones, and a reduction
may be applied. If z = B the reduction is approximately 25 percent,
increasing to about 50 percent for infinitely deep foundations. Most
foundations are shallow, however, and although this reduction can be
allowed for when a layer of soil is some depth below a foundation, the
settlement effects, in this case, are small so it is not customary practice
to reduce them f further.
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Determination of E
The modulus of elasticity, E, is usually obtained from the results of
a consolidated undrained triaxial test carried out on a representative
sample of the soil that is consolidated under a cell pressure
approximating to the effective overburden pressure at the level from
which the sample was taken. The soil is then sheared undrained to
obtain the plot of total deviator stress against strain; this is never a
straight line and to determine E a line must be drawn from the
origin up to the value of deviator stress that will be
Experienced in the field when the foundation load is applied. In
deep layers, there is the problem of assessing which depth
represents the average, and ideally, the layer should be split into
thinner layers with a value of E determined for each. A certain
amount of analysis work is necessary in order to carry out the above
procedure. The increments of principal stress Δ𝜎1 and Δ𝜎3 must be
obtained so that the value of Δ𝜎1 − Δ𝜎3 is known, and a safety
factor of 3.0 is generally applied against bearing capacity failure.
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 Skempton (1951) points out that when the factor of safety is 3.0 the
maximum shear stress induced in the soil is not greater than 65 per
cent of the ultimate shear strength, so that a value of E can be
obtained directly from the triaxial test results by simply determining
the strain corresponding to 65 per cent of the maximum deviator
stress and dividing this value into its corresponding stress. The
method produces results that are well within the range of accuracy
possible with other techniques.
Cohesionless soils
Owing to the high permeabilities of cohesionless soils, both the
elastic and the primary effects occur more or less together. The
resulting settlement from these factors is termed the immediate
settlement. The chance of bearing capacity failure in a foundation
supported on cohesionless soil is remote. For cohesionless soils it
has become standard practice to use settlement as the design
criteria, and the allowable bearing pressure, p, is generally defined
as the pressure that will cause an average settlement of 25 mm in
the foundation. Jan-April 2023 15
The determination of p from the results of the standard penetration
test. If the actual bearing pressure is not equal to the value of p then
the value of settlement is not known and, since it is difficult to
obtain this value from laboratory tests, resort must be made to in
situ test results. Most methods used required the value of Cr, the
penetration resistance of the Dutch cone, which is usually expressed
in MN/m2 or kN/m2.
Meyerhof 's method
A quick estimate of the settlement, p, of a footing on sand has been
proposed by Meyerhof (1974):

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 The two other methods commonly in use were proposed by DeBeer
and Martens (1957) and by Schmertmann (1970). Both methods
require a value for C, and. if either is to be used with standard
penetration test results, it is necessary to have the correlation
between C, and N. Obviously the value of C, obtained from the
Dutch cone penetration test must be related to the number of
recorded blows, N, obtained from the standard penetration test.
Various workers have attempted to find this relationship but, so far,
the results have not been encouraging. Mcigh and Nixon (1961)
showed that, over a number of sites. C, varied from (430 x N) to
(1930 x N)kN/m2. The relationship most commonly used at the
present time is that proposed by Meyerhof ( 1956):
Cr, = 400 x N kN/m2
where N = actual number of blows recorded in the standard
penetration test. It goes without saying that, whenever possible, Cr,
values obtained from actual cone tests should be used in preference
to values estimated from N values.
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 The relationships between N and C, determined by various workers
and the implications involved have been discussed by Meigh(1987).
De Beer and Martens' method
From the results of the in situ tests carried out, a plot of Cr (or N)
values against depth is prepared. With the aid of this plot, the
profile of the compressible soil beneath the proposed foundation
can be divided into a suitable number of layers, preferably of the
same thickness, although this is not essential. In the case of a deep
soil deposit the depth of soil considered as affected by the
foundation should not be less than 2.0B, ideally 4.0B, where B =
foundation width. The method proposes the use of a constant of
compressibility, Cs, where

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Schmertmann's method
Originally proposed by Schmertmann in 1970 and modified by
Schmertmann el al. (1978), the method is now generally preferred
to De Beer and Martens’ approach.
The method is based on two main assumptions:
(i) the greatest vertical strain in the soil beneath the centre of a
loaded foundation of width B occurs at depth B/2 below a
square foundation and at depth of H below a long foundation;
(ii) significant stresses caused by the foundation loading can be
regarded as insignificant at depths greater than z = 2.0B for a
square footing and 4.0B for a strip footing.
The method involves the use of a vertical strain influence factor, Iz,
whose value varies with depth. Values of Iz, for a net foundation
pressure increase, Δ𝑝 , equal to the effective overburden pressure at
depth B/2. are shown in Fig. 4.
The procedure consists of dividing the sand below the footing into n
layers
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of thicknesses Δ𝑧1 , Δ𝑧2 , Δ𝑧3 , . . . Δ𝑧𝑛 .If soil conditions permit it is
simpler if the layers can be made of equal thickness, Δz . The
vertical strain of a layer is taken as equal to the increase in vertical
stress at the centre of the layer, i.e. Δ𝑝 multiplied by Iz, which is
then divided by the product of Cr, and a factor x. Hence:

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 Fig. 4 variation of lz with depth (after
Schmcrtmann, 1970).

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 Fig. 5 Example 3. (a) N to z
relationship; (b) Cr to z
relationship (part {b) of
example); (c) variation of Iz (part
(b) of example).

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Consolidation settlement
This effect occurs in clays where the value of permeability prevents
the initial excess pore water pressures from draining away
immediately. The design loading used to calculate consolidation
settlement must be consistent with this effect. A large wheel load
rolling along a roadway resting on a clay will cause an immediate
settlement that is in theory completely recoverable once the wheel
has passed, but if the same load is applied permanently there will in
addition be consolidation. Judgement is necessary in deciding what
portion of the superimposed loading carried by a structure will be
sustained Jong enough to cause consolidation, and this involves a
quite different procedure from that used in a bearing capacity
analysis which must allow for total dead and superimposed
loadings.
One-dimensional consolidation
The pore waler in a saturated clay will commence to drain away
soon after immediate settlement has taken place, the removal of this
water leading to the volume change is known as consolidation (Fig.30
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.lb). The element contracts both horizontally and vertically under
the actions of Δ𝜎′3 ; and Δ𝜎1 , which gradually increase in magnitude
as the excess pore water pressure Δ𝑢 decreases. Eventually, when
Δ𝑢 = 0, then Δ𝜎′3 ; = Δ𝜎3 , and Δ𝜎′1 ; = Δ𝜎1 , and at this stage
consolidation ceases, although secondary consolidation may still be
apparent. If it can be arranged for the lateral expansion due to the
change in shape to equal the lateral compression consequent upon
the change in volume and for these changes to occur together, then
there will be no immediate settlement and the resulting compression
will be one-dimensional with all the strain occurring in the vertical
direction. Settlement by one-dimensional strain is by no means
uncommon in practice, and most natural soil deposits have
experienced one-dimensional settlement during the process of
deposition and consolidation. The consolidation of a clay layer
supporting a foundation whose dimensions are much greater than
the layer's thickness is essentially one-dimensional as lateral strain
effects arc negligible save at the edges.
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