Soil-Foundation Interaction and Its Influences on Some Geotechnical Properties of Sulaimaniyah, Northern Iraq Fine-Grained Soils Utilizing Plaxis 3D

Abstract

Foundations of various construction projects usually can be either shallow or deep foundations. A mat foundation is one of the common shallow foundations typically utilized for various types of buildings. Foundations construct on various types of soils, which might be essential to understand the interaction scenario between them as they are two different types of materials. This study aims to discover the characteristics of the soil-foundation interaction for the suitable areas for the resettlement process in focus on a certain foundation type with a dimension of 10m x 10m x 0.5m, applied on twelve areas rich with fine-grained soil types in Sulaimaniyah governorate, northern Iraq, which suffer from some geotechnical problems such as building cracks. Application of loads was conducted in three stages; 35 tons, 70 tons, and 140 tons were directly applied on the utilized soils. The obtained results of the study prove that the 3D Plaxis is quite capable to predict the settlement of each foundation modeled on each utilized soil type. In addition, the modeling work achieved that the utilized foundation center stresses are notably smaller than the obtained foundation corner stresses. The obtained soil settlement values are not dependent on the soil-bearing capacity.