Effect of Load Eccentricity on the Bearing Capacity of Strip Footings on Non-homogenous Clay Overlying Bedrock

Abstract

In underwater infrastructure design, foundations are embedded in soft clay seabeds that exhibited non-homogeneity of cohesion, and subjected to combined actions of vertical, inclined or eccentric loads due to the environmental conditions such as self-weight, wind and wave forces acting on substructure. This paper investigates the undrained bearing capacity for surface and embedded strip footings on non-homogenous clay overlying bedrock. Elasto-plastic finite element analyses are carried out for perfectly rough strip footings on Tresca soil under vertical eccentric loads. Meyerhof’s effective width rule is examined for the cases of surface and embedded footings in non-homogeneous clay. The effect of load eccentricity on the distribution of the normal stresses under strip footings is also investigated in this study. It is found that the effective width rule provides a conservative estimate of the bearing capacity. The elasto-plastic calculations predict that tensile stresses occur for surface footings because of the full bonding at the soil-footing interfaces, while for embedded footings, there is no tensile stresses.