Comparative study of bearing capacity of buried footings using random limit analysis and random finite element method

Bearing capacity and failure mechanism of a buried footing in uniformsoils have been simulated using limit analysis and finite element analysis in the past decades. In realistic conditions, soil properties always vary spatially. This dramatically affects the failure mechanism of a footing and, in turn, its bearing capacity. This paper illustrates an investigation into the failure mechanism and bearing capacity of a vertically and centrally loaded footing embedded in spatially variable clayey soils using random lower bound limit analysis, random upper bound limit analysis and random finite element analysis. The footing was embedded to 4 times its width. Monte Carlo simulation was performed for 400 realizations of random fields of undrained shear strength. The majority of the bearing capacity factors obtained from the finite element method is bounded by those obtained from the lower bound limit analysis and the upper bound limit analysis, but more close to the upper bound results. A full-flow failure mechanism is observed for the deeply embedded footing in spatially variable soil. The shear path of the footing shows an unsymmetrical pattern, which results from the spatially variable and unsymmetrical random field of soil shear strength. © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, London.