for a number of field case studies with reliable measurements of Aa'hiVCiP ,

and it was found to provide inconsistent agreement with field measurements (52,53,54). In particular, this procedure greatly overestimates
Ao-,VCi/,at significant depths below the ground surface. The necessary
components of a reliable analysis of A(r'hjVCiP are summarized on page 11 of
the original paper.

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APPENDIX. REFERENCES

47. Broms, B. (1971). "Lateral earth pressures due to compaction of

cohesionless soils." Proc, 4 th Budapest Conference on Soil Mech. and
Foundation Engrg., Budapest, Hungary, 373-384.
48. Broms, B., and Ingleson, I. (1971). "Earth pressures against abutment of
rigid frame bridge." Geotechnique, 21(1), 15-28.
49. Ingold, T. S. (1979). "Retaining wall performance during backfilling." J. of
Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 105(5), 613-626.
50. Ingold, T. S., "The effect of compaction on retaining walls." Geotechnique,
29(3), 265-283.
51. Ou, C. Y. (1987). "Finite element analysis of compaction-induced stresses
and deformations." thesis submitted to Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.,
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.
52. Seed, R. B. and Duncan, J. M. (1983). "Soil-structure interaction effects of
compaction-induced stresses and deflections." Geotech. Engrg. Res. Report,
No. UCBIGTI83-06, Univ. of California, Berkeley, Calif.
53. Seed, R. B. and Duncan, J. M. (1986). "FE analyses: Compaction-induced
stresses and deformations." / . of Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 112(1), 23-43.
54. Seed, R. B., Collin, J. G., and Mitchell, J. K. (1986). "FEM analyses of
compacted reinforced-soil walls." Proc, 2nd Internal. Conference on
Numerical Methods in Geomech., Ghent, Belgium, 553-562.

DYNAMIC RESPONSE OF ARBITRARILY SHAPED

FOUNDATIONS: EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION8
Discussion by Milos Novak,4 Fellow, ASCE
In recent years there has been a considerable increase in the number of
data derived for the evaluation of stiffness and damping constants of
various footings using the theory of elastic homogeneous halfspace. Thus,
it is very useful that the authors compiled the many data available,
augmented them, and condensed them into a unified approach and simple
empirical expressions. Finally, they verified the theory by comparing it
with the results of free vibration experiments conducted in a bin on small
"February, 1986, Vol. 112, No. 2, by Ricardo Dobry, George Gazetas and
Kenneth
H. Stokoe, II (Paper 20371).
4
Prof., Faculty of Engrg. Science, Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Ontario,
Canada N6A 5B9.
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Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by New York University on 05/10/15. For personal use only.

scale models, obtaining, on the whole, excellent agreement. This is very

encouraging, but some qualifications may be in order.
There are two types of experimental verification of a theory: (1) The
theory may be tested as such, in which case conditions of the experiment
should be as close to the assumptions of the theory as possible; and (2) the
applicability of the theory to a real physical situation, i.e., field conditions,
may be tested. The authors' experiments are closer to the first type than
the second. Since they do not make any reference to field experiments, it
may be useful to submit that under field conditions the accord between the
experiments and the elastic homogeneous halfspace theory may not be as
satisfactory as the authors observed. Ample evidence of this was reported.
For example, a very comprehensive evaluation of field experiments was
recently presented by Verbic (10), a summary of earlier results (11) was
published by the writer (12), and an examination of a large embedded
foundation was reported by Lin and Jennings (13). A few problems emerge
from such field observations.
Vertical Response
For the vertical response, a stratum or a layered halfspace often give
much better results than the homogeneous halfspace. This can be seen
from the damping of individual footings, which the halfspace theory very
often markedly overestimates (10,11,12) or from stiffness constants (and
natural frequencies) of footings featuring bases of different sizes. As a
point of historical interest, experiments on large footings of different sizes,
conducted many years ago, led some Russian researchers to a theoretical
model comprising an elastic halfspace with a membrane stretched on top of
it. This model was employed to bring its properties closer to those of a
stratum.
Torsional Response
Experiments involving steady-state forced oscillation often indicate
slippage between the footing and the soil resulting from limited shear
capacity in the contact surface. This slippage reduces stiffness and, for
surface footings, increases the damping due to additonal friction outweighing the loss of the generally small radiation damping; for embedded
foundations, the much higher geometric damping can be drastically reduced and the frictional damping accompanying slippage is smaller than
the loss resulting in a reduciton of total damping. An early study of these
phenomena involving surface footings was conducted by Weissmann (14);
slippage in embedded foundations was observed in experiments described
in Ref. 15. Of course, for very small amplitudes, slippage need not occur,
and with material damping accounted for, good predictions can be obtained (Ref. 16, Table 3).
Embedded Foundations
Embedment effects, not considered by the authors in their study,
understandably due to its already large extent, are strongly affected by
slippage and/or separation and soil nonhomogeneity. Without accounting
for these factors, embedment effects can be grossly exaggerated.
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Nonlinearity and Experimental Results

Experiments involving steady-state forced oscillation invariably indicate
nonlinearity of the response curves measured. If a linear theory is used to
extract stiffness and damping constants from such response curves, scatter
results that is often greater than the differences due to foundation shapes
observed by the authors. In the case of heavily damped free vibration,
when only one cycle can be used for data extraction, no corrections for
nonlinearity are possible.

Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by New York University on 05/10/15. For personal use only.

APPENDIX. REFERENCES

10. Verbic, B. (1985). "Experimental and analytical analysis of soil-structure

interaction; Part one: Block foundations." Res. Report, Inst, for Materials
and Struct., Faculty of Civ. Engrg., Sarajevo, Yujoslavia, Feb., 99.
11. Novak, M. (1970). "Prediction of footing vibrations." J. of the Soil Mech.
and Found. Div., Proc, ASCE, 96(3), May, 837-861.
12. Novak, M. (1985). "Experiments with shallow and deep foundations."
Proc, ASCE Symp. "Vibration Problems in Geotech. Engrg", ASCE,
Detroit, Mich., Oct., 1-26.
13. Lin, A. N., and Jennings, P. C. (1984). "Effect of embedment on
foundation-soil impedances." J. of Engrg. Mech., 110(7), July, 1060-1075.
14. Weissmann, G. F. (1971). "Torsional vibration of circular foundations." J.
Soil Mech. and Found. Div., ASCE, 97(9), 1293-1316.
15. Novak, M., and Sachs, K. (1973). "Torsional and coupled vibrations of
embedded footings." Int. J. of Earthquake Engrg. and Struct. Dynamics,
2(11), 33.
16. Novak, M., and Howell, J. F. (1978). "Dynamic response of pile
foundations in torsion." / . of Geotech. Engrg. Div., 104(5), May, 535-552.

Closure by Ricardo Dobry,5 George Gazetas,6 and Kenneth H. Stokoe, II,7

Members, ASCE

The writers would like to thank Professor Novak for his kind words
about the usefulness of the work presented in this paper and its companion
(3), and for his addressing the important question of how to apply these
results to actual vibrating foundations in the field. The two papers are part
of a series published by the writers, where simple engineering methods are
developed for the calculation of the dynamic response of both shallow and
deep foundations, based on a combination of rigorous analytical solutions
and simplified theoretical models. This approach has proven very successful, as summarized in Ref. 17, It continues a tradition of approximate
simple methods, equations, and charts fitted to the results of more
sophisticated formulations by a number of authors: Lysmer and Richart
(18), Whitman and Richart (19), Novak and Beredugo (20), Roesset (21),
Veletsos (22,23), and others.
A well-conceived, simple procedure, with an attached explanation of its
basis and limitations, is extremely useful to practicing engineers. First of
5

Prof. of Civ. Engrg., Rensselaer Polytech. Inst., Troy, N.Y.

Prof. of Civ. Engrg., Nat. Tech. Univ., Athens, Greece; and Prof, of Civ.
Engrg., Rensselaer Polytech. Inst., Troy, N.Y.
7
Prof. of Civ. Engrg., Univ. of Texas, Austin, Tex.
6

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