Settlements in shallow foundations: comparison between analytical and numerical forecasts

Pedro Oselieri¹; Patricia Hallak¹; Mario Riccio¹

¹ UFJF - Federal University of Juiz de Fora

doi:10.20906/CPS/CILAMCE2017-0091

Resumo

The shallow foundations are normally supported on soils, this leads in settlements that must be evaluated according to the work importance. Excessive settlements can produce undesirable structural pathologies. The elastic settlement, or immediate, can be calculated by innumerous analytical formulations, regarding systems with different soil layers in some cases. In this paper is presented the settlement calculation of a hypothetical shallow foundation (foundation supported on residual soil) by means of numerical method using Abaqus v.6.3 computer program (finite element method) and also by means of two analytical formulations: Steinbrenner (1934) generalized by Rosendiz (1967) and Davis and Poulos (1968). The hypothetical shallow foundation is square with 1.50m side and height equal to 0.60m. The geotechnical profile is formed by four different layers with variable thickness. Also it was varied the natural apparent unit weight of soil and Young´s modulus of each layer. The soil was modeled as a homogeneous, isotropic and linear elastic material. Over the foundation were applied variable and growing loads, i.e., 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 kPa. The comparison obtained between numerical (finite element method) and analytical (Steinbrenner, 1934 and Davis e Poulos, 1968) approaches showed that there is a satisfactory concordance between the numerical forecast and analytical calculations using the multi-layers approach. The results presented in this paper are restricted to condition in which the soil do not reaches the plastic condition.

Palavras-chave: shallow foundation; settlements; numerical analysis; analytical analysis