Influence of a nonlinear failure criterion on the bearing capacity of a strip footing resting on rock mass using a lower bound approach

Abstract

The strength envelope of almost all geomaterials is nonlinear when one considers a wide range of stresses. Therefore, a nonlinear failure criterion needs to be used in stability analysis whenever the effects of nonlinearity are too significant to be neglected. This paper presents a lower bound solution to the bearing capacity calculation of a strip footing resting on a homogenous weightless rock mass using the nonlinear Hoek–Brown (HB) failure criterion. Two types of admissible stress fields are used to develop solutions. The first stress field has three stress legs. The second stress field has a spiral-like shape with n stress legs, where n may vary from 9 to 18 000 (even to infinity). Using two admissible stress fields, equations are derived and used for the calculation of lower bound bearing capacity values of a strip footing on rock mass. The influences of the admissible stress leg number n and the material parameter s in the nonlinear HB failure criterion are investigated. It is found that the lower bound bearing capacity calculated using the spiral-like shape admissible stress field approaches to the true optimum value as the stress leg number n increases, and the nonlinear material parameter s has a strong influence on the bearing capacity of the footing.Key words: HB failure criterion, bearing capacity, stress leg, lower bound theorem, rock.