Bearing Capacity of Strip Footings on Anisotropic Soils by the Finite Elements and Linear Programming

The bearing capacity of strip footings on anisotropic soils was examined by using the method of lower-bound-limit analysis coupled with the finite elements and linear programming technique. The governing equations were first used assuming anisotropic soil shear strength, followed by some modifications to make them applicable for this particular problem. The method was applied to inherently anisotropic soils under a static loading condition, but it can be extended to other problems. The modifications lead to an iterative procedure that solved stability problems assuming shear-strength anisotropy. This iterative procedure is, in fact, a procedure by which the shear-strength parameters are incrementally updated to attain a stationary and converged solution. In this study, the focus was on the bearing capacity of surface footings on anisotropic soils, and eventually, design charts were developed for the problem under study. A few comparisons were also made to show the practical advantages of the results and the verification.