Effect of footing width on Nγ and failure envelope of eccentrically and obliquely loaded strip footings on sand

Abstract

This paper thoroughly investigates the bearing capacity of strip footings on sand under combined loading by using a lower-bound limit analysis in conjunction with finite elements and second-order cone programming (SOCP). Two analyses were performed: one using a constant friction angle and the other using a variable friction angle. The analyses with a constant friction angle were used to calibrate the existing results, including the classical solutions commonly used in foundation design practice and other numerical or experimental solutions. The analyses with a variable friction angle allow us to investigate the effect of footing width B on the bearing capacity of strip footings. An iteration computational procedure is employed to account for the dependency of the friction angle on the stress level. According to the numerical results, it is found that the bearing capacity factor Nγ for eccentrically or obliquely loaded strip footings linearly decreases with the increase of B on a log–log scale, where the range 0.3–5 m of footing width was considered in this paper. In addition, it is found that the footing width has a negligible effect on the shape and size of the normalized failure envelopes.