Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations cowski on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Vertical stresses below a footing 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

FixedEarth

Geotechnical
Joined
Feb 4, 2010
Messages
559
Location
US
I sometimes encounter a shallow foundation that has a finite layer of suitable soil below it and then underlain by soft Clay. I am trying to use the Boussinesq equations to generate footing stress contours in color beneath the footing. This way, I can see the stress at the top of the soft clay below the center of the footing and at the edge of the footing. So it will need to to generate "onion like bulbs". Any ideas how this can be done in any low cost calculation tool? Thanks.
 
Assuming you know how to apply the Boussinesq equation:

[ul]
[li]Calculate stresses along vertical lines over the region of interest.[/li]
[li]Interpolate to find the depth of stress at each of the contour intervals of interest.[/li]
[li]Plot the results on an XY graph with the outline of the footing and the bottom of the layer.[/li]
[/ul]

The tricky bit would be doing the interplation and choosing the right points to connect. For a one off you could do it by hand, but if you want something automated it would probably need a bit of VBA.

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top