Failure Envelope Approach for Consolidated Undrained Capacity of Shallow Foundations

Abstract

A generalized framework is applied to predict consolidated undrained VHM failure envelopes for surface circular and strip foundations. The failure envelopes for consolidated undrained conditions are shown to be scaled from those for unconsolidated undrained conditions by the uniaxial consolidated undrained capacities, which are predicted through a theoretical framework based on fundamental critical state soil mechanics. The framework is applied to results from small-strain finite-element analyses for a strip and circular foundation of selected foundation dimension and soil conditions, and the versatility of the framework is validated through a parametric study. The generalized theoretical framework enables consolidated undrained VHM failure envelopes to be determined for a practical range of foundation sizes and linearly increasing soil shear-strength profiles through the expressions presented in this paper.