Macroelement modeling of shallow foundations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive macroelement model for shallow foundations that incorporates elastoplastic soil behavior and foundation uplift, enabling improved soil-structure interaction analysis.

Contribution

It presents a novel macroelement model combining elastoplasticity and uplift mechanisms, with independent bounding surface formulation for cyclic soil response.

Findings

Model accurately predicts soil-structure interaction behaviors.

Incorporates reversible uplift and irreversible soil plasticity.

Validated through application to simple real structures.

Abstract

The paper presents a new macroelement model for shallow foundations. The model is defined through a non-linear constitutive law written in terms of some generalized force and displacement parameters. The linear part of this constitutive law comes from the dynamic impedances of the foundation. The non-linear part comprises two mechanisms. One is due to the irreversible elastoplastic soil behavior: it is described with a bounding surface hypoplastic model, adapted for the description of the cyclic soil response. An original feature of the formulation is that the bounding surface is considered independently of the surface of ultimate loads of the system. The second mechanism is the detachment that can take place at the soil-footing interface (foundation uplift). It is totally reversible and non-dissipative and can thus be described by a phenomenological non-linear elastic model. The macroelement is qualitatively validated by application to soil-structure interaction analyses of simple real structures.