New approach to calculate the bearing capacity of a strip shallow foundation on homogeneous soil

ABSTRACT

A new approach based on the limit equilibrium method to calculate the ultimate bearing capacity of a strip shallow foundation is presented in this paper. The bearing capacity estimated with Terzaghi’s three-term basic formula using the superposition method has proven to be conservative. A proposed failure mechanism to determine the bearing capacity coefficients of the three parameters, namely, the cohesion (N_c), the surface surcharge (N_q) and the soil weight (N_γ), is developed. The ‘individual minimum’ of each coefficient is determined using different failure mechanisms; hence, a new analytical approximation is suggested for calculating the ‘global minimum’ of the bearing capacity with a single failure mechanism without superposition. The rationality of the results of the analytical solutions (bearing capacity and failure mechanism) is verified using finite element analysis with the program PLAXIS 2D and kinematical analysis with the program FIDES-GeoStability.

KEYWORDS:

• bearing capacity
• failure mechanism
• shallow foundation
• limit equilibrium
• superposition
• FEM

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).