3D lower bound bearing capacity of smooth rectangular surface footings

Abstract

This paper describes a technique for computing lower bound limit bearing capacity of rectangular surface footings. A perfectly rigid plastic model is adopted to describe the property of soil materials. The bearing capacity of footing is regarded as the objective function in this method, subject to the stress boundary condition, stress discontinuity equilibrium condition, stress equilibrium condition and yield condition. By solving a non-linear optimization problem, i.e., searching the maximum value of objective function, the bearing capacity of smooth surface rectangular footing and the corresponding 3D stress field are obtained.