Foundation failure is often attributed to unknown site or loading conditions. These failures can be categorized as being the result of inadequate site investigation, design procedure and/or construction techniques. In foundation design, engineers may introduce simplifying assumptions, which may not exist at best, overlooking loading conditions and ignoring certain characteristics of the soil. In additional, due to lack of rational solutions in foundation engineering, designers may use empirical methods given in textbooks and design manuals. Often, these methods have design limitations and range of validity, which are hardly met. The outcome from these categories is manifested in the form of excessive settlement of the foundation elements, reduction of bearing capacity and perhaps catastrophic disasters and loss of lives. While difficulties during site investigation and construction of foundations can be easily overcome by following adequate procedure and construction norms, design procedure remains undefined in some areas. In this paper, some documented design procedures will be examined against the authors’ research results and collected data
Hanna et al. (Tue,) studied this question.