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ON FOUNDATIONS UNDER SEISMIC LOADS

Article · January 2007

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 Foundations under seismic loads
Fondations sous charges sismiques
Shamsher Prakash1
Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil Engineering,Missouri University of Science and
Technology, Rolla, MO 65401,USA, prakash@mst.edu

Vijay K Puri2
Professor , Civil Engineering Department, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901,
USA, puri@engr.siu.edu

ABSTRACT
Shallow foundations may experience a reduction in bearing capacity and increase in settlement and tilt due to seismic loading as
has been observed during several earthquakes. Shallow foundations for seismic loads have generally been designed by the
equivalent static approach. Foundations are considered eccentrically loaded and the ultimate bearing capacity is estimated
accordingly. Building Codes generally allow an increase of 33% in bearing capacity when earthquake loads, in addition to
static loads are used in the design of the foundation. Considerable research effort has been devoted to the determination of the
dynamic bearing capacity in recent years. Significant developments in determination of dynamic bearing capacity are presented
in the paper.

RÉSUMÉ
Fondations superficielles peuvent expérience une réduction de capacité portante et augmentation de règlement et
d'inclinaison en raison de la charge sismique comme a été observé au cours de plusieurs tremblements de terre. Fondations
superficielles pour les charges sismiques ont généralement été conçues par l'approche statique équivalente. Fondations sont
considérés comme excentrique chargées et la capacité portante ultime est estimée en conséquence. Les Codes du bâtiment
permettent généralement une augmentation de 33 % de la capacité portante lorsque les charges de tremblement de terre en plus
de charges statiques sont utilisées dans la conception de la Fondation. Recherche un effort considérable a été consacré à la
détermination de la capacité portante dynamique au cours des dernières années. Des développements importants dans la
détermination de la capacité portante dynamique sont présentées dans le document.

Keywords: Capacity, Bearing, Dynamic, Settlement, Tilt, Determination

1 INTRODUCTION  Cyclic degradation of soil strength may

Structures subjected to earthquakes may be
supported on shallow foundations or on piles
depending on the load transmitted and the soil
conditions at the site. The foundation must be
safe both for the static as well for the dynamic
loads imposed by the earthquakes. The
earthquake associated ground shaking can affect
the shallow foundation in a variety of ways:
lead to bearing capacity failure during
the earthquake.
 Large horizontal inertial force due to
earthquake may cause the foundation to
fail in sliding or overturning.
 Soil liquefaction beneath and around the
foundation may lead to large settlement
and tilting of the foundation.
  Softening or failure of the ground due to
redistribution of pore water pressure
after an earthquake which may
adveslersly affect the stability of the
foundation post-earthquake.
Bearing capacity failures of shallow
foundations have been observed in Mexico City
during Michoacan earthqake of 1985 [1,2] and in
city of Adapazari due to 1999 Kocaeli
earthquake [3,4,5]. Typical examples of bearing
capacity failure in Adapazari are shown in Fig.
1. The surface soils at the site of foundation
damge belong to CL/ ML group which are
generally considered non-liquefiable. Settlemets
as much as 0.5-0.7m have been observed in loose
sands[6] in Hachinohe during the 1968
Tokachioki earthquake of magnitude 7.9.
Settlements of 0.5 -1.0 m were observed at Port
and Roko Island in Kobe due to the Hygoken
Nanbu (M=6.9) earthquake.
(a)Bearing Capacity Failure
(b) Tilting of Buildings after Bearing Capacity Failure
Figure 1. Examples of Bearing Capacity Failures of
shallow foundations in Adapazari[5]
Several research investigations, mostly
analytical have been conducted in the area of
dynamic bearing capacity of foundations in the
recent years. The more significant of these
studies are presented his paper.
2 DEVELOPMENTS IN DYNAMIC
BEARING CAPACITY
The response of a footing to dynamic loads is
affected by the (1) nature and magnitude of
dynamic loads, (2) number of pulses and (3) the
strain rate response of soil. Shallow foundations
for seismic loads are usually designed by the
equivalent static approach. The foundations are
considered as eccentrically loaded with inclined
load (combination of vertical + horizontal load)
and the ultimate bearing capacity is accordingly
estimated. To account for the effect of dynamic
nature of the load, the bearing capacity factors
are determined by using dynamic angle of
internal friction which is taken as 2-degrees less
than its static value [7]. Building Codes generally
permit an increase of 33 % in allowable bearing
capacity when earthquake loads in addition to
static loads are used in design of the foundation.
This recommendation may be reasonable for
dense granular soils, stiff to very stiff clays or
hard bedrocks but is not applicable for friable
rock, loose soils susceptible to liquefaction or
pore water pressure increase, sensitive clays or
clays likely to undergo plastic flow [8].
 Behavior of small footing resting on dense
sands and subjected to static and impulse loads
was experimentally investigated by Selig and
McKee [9]. It was observed that the footing
failed in general shear in static case and local
shear failure occurred in the dynamic case. Large
settlements at failure were observed for the
dynamic case. These experimental results
indicate that for given value of settlement, the
dynamic bearing capacity is lower than the static
bearing capacity. This observation is further
supported by results of experimental studies on
Figure 3. Failure surface used by Budhu and al-karni for
small footings on surface of sand [10] wherein static and dynamic case[12]
dynamic bearing capacity was about 30 % lower
than static bearing capacity. Therefore, the Logaritmic failure surfaces shown in Fig. 3
increase in bearing capacity permitted by codes were assumed by Budhu and Al-karni [12] to
should be taken with a caution. determine the seismic bearing capacity of soils.
Recently several analytical studies on They suggested modifications to the equations
seismic bearing capacity of shallow footing have commonly used for static bearing capacity to
been reported. These studies used limit obtain the dynamic bearing capacityas follows:
equilibrium approach with varous assumptions
on the failure surface. A plain failure surface qud = c Nc Sc dc ec +q Nq Sqs dq eq + 0.5 γ B Nγ Sγ
shown in Fig. 2 was assummed by Richard et al
[11] and equations and charts were developed d γ eγ (1)
to estimate seismic bering capacity and
settlement using foundation width, depth, soil Where,
properties and horizontal and vertical
acceleration components. This approach is used Nc, Nq, Nγ, are the static bearing capacity
for simplicity although the assumption of a plane
failure surface may not be realistic. factors.

Sc, Sqs, Sγ are static shape factors.

dc, dq, dγ are static depth factors

ec , eq and eγ are the seismic factors estimated

using following equations


ec  exp  4.3k hl  D  (2)

  5.3k h1.2 
Figure 2. Failure surface in soil for seismic bearing
(3)
eq  (1  kv ) exp   
capacity assumed by Richard et al [11]

  1  k v 

2   9k h1.2  (4)
e  (1  kv ) exp   
3   1  kv 
 Where,

Kh and Kv are the horizontal and vertical

acceleration coefficients respectively.

H= depth of the failure zone from the ground

surface and

D= c/ γH

0.5B  
H exp  tan    D f
   2 
cos  
 4 2

(5)

Df = depth of the footing and

(a) Ncd
φ = angle of internal friction

c=cohesion of soil

An experimental study was also conducted by

Al-Karni and Budhu [13] on model footing to
study the response under horizontal acceleration
and compared the results with the approach
suggested in [12].

(b) Nqd
Figure 4. Failure Surfaces under static and Seismic
Loading [14]

(c) Nγd
Fig. 5 Values of bearing cacity factors (a) Ncd (b) Nqd and
(c) Nγd [14]
A study of the seismic bearing capacity of
shallow strip footing was conducted by
Chaudhury and Subba Rao [14]. The failure
surfaces for the static and dynamic case are
shown in Fig.4. They used the limiting
equilibrium appraoach and the eqivalent static
method to repesent the seismic forces and
obtained the seismic bearing capacity factors.
The dynamic bearing capacity „qud‟ is obtained
as:
qud = c Ncd + q Nqd + 0.5 γ B Nγd
(6)
Where, Ncd, Nqd and Nγd are seismic bearing
capacity factors.
Values of Ncd, Nqd and Nγd are shown in Fig.
5 for various combinations of kh , kv and Φ.
As there is general lack of experimental
data, it is difficult to verify which one of the
analytical appraoaches (namely those given in
[11,12 or 14]) may be expected to provide
reasonable estimates of seismic bearing capacity.
Gajan and Kutter [15] provided the
concept of contact interface model to estimate
the load capacities, stiffness degradation, energy
dissipation and deformation of shallow
foundations under combined cyclic loading. The
„contact interface model‟ provides a nonlinear
relation between cyclic loads and displacements
of the footing–soil system during combined
cyclic loading (vertical, shear, and moment).
3 SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS IN
LIQUEFIABLE SOILS
Gazezas et al [16] studied tilting of buildings in
1999 Turkey earthquake. Detailed scrutiny of the
“Adapazari failures” showed that significant
tilting and toppling were observed only in
relatively slender buildings (with aspect ratio: H
/ B > 2), provided they were laterally free from
other buildings on one of their sides. Wider
and/or contiguous buildings suffered small if any
rotation. for the prevailing soil conditions and
type of seismic shaking; most buildings with H /
B > 1.8 overturned, whereas building with H / B
< 0.8 essentially only settled vertically, with no
visible tilting.(Figure 6 shows a plot of H/B to
tilt angle of building). Soil profiles based on
three SPT and three CPT tests, performed in
front of each building of interest, reveal the
presence of a number of alternating sandy-silt
and silty-sand layers, from the surface down to a
depth of at least 15 m with values of point
resistance qc ≈ (0.4 – 5.0) MPa . Seismo–cone
measurements revealed wave velocities Vs less
than 60 m/s for depths down to 15 m, indicative
of extremely soft soil layers. Ground acceleration
was not recorded in Tigcilar. Using in 1-D wave
propagation analysis, the EW component of the
Sakarya accelerogram (recorded on soft rock
outcrop, in the hilly outskirts of the city) leads to
acceleration values between 0.20 g -0.30 g, with
several significant cycles of motion, with
dominant period in excess of 2 seconds. Even
such relatively small levels of acceleration would
have liquefied at least the upper-most loose
sandy silt layers of a total thickness 1–2 m, and
would have produced excess pore-water
pressures in the lower layers [16]
REFERENCES
Fig. 6. Finite element used by Tolga and Bakir [15]
4 CONCLUSION
 Shallow foundations subjected to
combined static and seismic loads are
commonly designed using the pseudo-
static approach. Most research effort in
recent years has been directed towards
better defining the failure surface under
combined static and seismic loading and
efforts have been made to understand
the behavior of the foundations under
seismic loading
 Analytical solutions need validation on
model, full scale and/or centrifuge tests.
There has been some effort in this
direction also.
 The codal provisions permitting 33%
increase in static bearing capacity for
the seismic case need to be re-examined
in view of the test results cited in this
paper [9,10] and the settlement and tilt
that may be experienced by the footings
due to earthquake loading.
[15] S.Gajan and B.L.Kutter, Contact interface model for
 Only the dynamic bearing capacity
aspect has been presented in the paper.
Settlement and tilt of
the foundation are very important will
be discussed separately in future.
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