A flexible circular plate on a heterogeneous elastic half-space: influence coefficients for contact stress and settlement

Abstract

To predict the stresses and displacements in soil beneath a flexible foundation it has been found that a better agreement with observed results is obtained by assuming that Young's modulus increases with depth. An outline is given of a finite element method which has been used to study the behaviour of a rigid circular plate on a half-space together with an extension of the method to allow for plate flexibility. In this note, the authors provide influence coefficients from which the contact stress and settlement may be computed. /TRRL/