317

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.

RSUM
Fondations superficielles peuvent exprience une rduction de capacit portante et augmentation de rglement et
d'inclinaison en raison de la charge sismique comme a t observ au cours de plusieurs tremblements de terre. Fondations
superficielles pour les charges sismiques ont gnralement t conues par l'approche statique quivalente. Fondations sont
considrs comme excentrique charges et la capacit portante ultime est estime en consquence. Les Codes du btiment
permettent gnralement une augmentation de 33 % de la capacit portante lorsque les charges de tremblement de terre en plus
de charges statiques sont utilises dans la conception de la Fondation. Recherche un effort considrable a t consacr la
dtermination de la capacit portante dynamique au cours des dernires annes. Des dveloppements importants dans la
dtermination de la capacit portante dynamique sont prsentes dans le document.

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

1 INTRODUCTION Large horizontal inertial force due to

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:
Cyclic degradation of soil strength may
lead to bearing capacity failure during
the earthquake.
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
317
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
small footings on surface of sand [10] wherein
dynamic bearing capacity was about 30 % lower
than static bearing capacity. Therefore, the
increase in bearing capacity permitted by codes
should be taken with a caution.
317
Recently several analytical studies on Where,
seismic bearing capacity of shallow footing have
been reported. These studies used limit Nc, Nq, N, are the static bearing capacity
equilibrium approach with varous assumptions
on the failure surface. A plain failure surface factors.
shown in Fig. 2 was assummed by Richard et al
[11] and equations and charts were developed Sc, Sqs, S are static shape factors.
to estimate seismic bering capacity and
settlement using foundation width, depth, soil
properties and horizontal and vertical
acceleration components. This approach is used dc, dq, d are static depth factors
for simplicity although the assumption of a plane
failure surface may not be realistic. ec , eq and e are the seismic factors estimated

using following equations

ec exp 4.3k hl D (2)

5.3k h1.2 (3)

eq (1 kv ) exp
1 k v

2 9k 1.2 (4)
e (1 kv ) exp h
3 1 kv
Figure 2. Failure surface in soil for seismic bearing Where,
capacity assumed by Richard et al [11]

Kh and Kv are the horizontal and vertical

acceleration coefficients respectively.

H= depth of the failure zone from the ground

surface and

D= c/ H

0.5B
H exp tan D f
2
Figure 3. Failure surface used by Budhu and al-karni for
cos

static and dynamic case[12]
4 2
Logaritmic failure surfaces shown in Fig. 3
were assumed by Budhu and Al-karni [12] to (5)
determine the seismic bearing capacity of soils.
They suggested modifications to the equations Df = depth of the footing and
commonly used for static bearing capacity to
obtain the dynamic bearing capacityas follows: = angle of internal friction

qud = c Nc Sc dc ec +q Nq Sqs dq eq + 0.5 B N S c=cohesion of soil

d e (1)
317
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].

Figure 4. Failure Surfaces under static and Seismic

Loading [14]

(b) Nqd

(a) Ncd (c) Nd

Fig. 5 Values of bearing cacity factors (a) Ncd (b) Nqd and
(c) Nd [14]

A study of the seismic bearing capacity of

shallow strip footing was conducted by
Chaudhury and Subba Rao [14]. The failure
317
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 B Nd
(6)
Where, Ncd, Nqd and Nd are seismic bearing
capacity factors.
Values of Ncd, Nqd and Nd are shown in Fig.
5 for various combinations of kh , kv and .
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 footingsoil 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 . Seismocone
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 12 m, and
would have produced excess pore-water
pressures in the lower layers [16]
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
317
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.
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.
[12] M. Budhu and A.A. al-Karni, Seismic bearing
capacity of soils, Geotechnique, 43(1), pp. 181-187, 1993.
[13] A.A. Al-Karni and M. Budhu, An experimental study of
seismic bearing capacity of shallow footings, Proc. 4 th
International Conference on Recent advances in
Geotechnical earthquake Engineering and soil dynamics
and symposium in honor of professor W.D. Liam Finn,
CD-ROM, San-Diego, CA, 2001.
[14] D. Chaudhury and K.S. Subba Rao, Seismic bearing
capacity of shallow strip footings, Geotechnical and
geological engineering, 23(4), pp. 403-418, 2005.
[15] S.Gajan and B.L.Kutter, Contact interface model for
shallow foundations subjected to combined cyclic
loading", Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental
Engineering, ASCE, Vol. 135 (3), pp 407-419, 2009.
[16] G. Gazetas, M. Apostou and J.Anasta- Sopoular,
Seismic bearing capacity failure and overturning of
Terveler Building in Adapazari 1999, Proc.Fifth
Inter.Conf on Case histories in Geotechnical. Engineering.
New York CD ROM SOAP11(1-51), 2004.

REFERENCES

[1] M.J. Mendoza and G. Avunit, The Mexico

earthquake of September 19,1985-behavior of building
foundations in Mexico city, Earthquake Spectra, 4(4): 835-
853, 1988
[2] L. Zeevart, Seismosoil dynamics of foundations in
Mexico city earthquake , September 1985, Journal of
Geotechnical Engineering, 117(3): 376-427, 1991
[3] G. Karaca, An investigation into large vertical
displacement experienced by the structures in Adapazari
during 17 August 1999 earthquake, MS thesis, Middle East
Technical University , Ankara, Turkey 2001.
[4] B.S. Bakir, H. Sucuoglu and T. Yilmaz, An
overview of local site effects and the associated building
damage during 17 August 1999 Izmit earthquake, Bulletin of
seismological Society of America, 92(1): 509-526, 2002.
[5] M.T. Yilmaz, O. Pekcan and B.S. Bakir, Undrained
cyclic shear and deformation behavior of silt-clay mixtures
of Adapazari, turkey, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake
Engineering, 14(7) : 497-507, 2004 .
[6] Y. Ohsaki, Effects of sand compaction on
liquefaction during Tokachioki earthquake. Soils and
Foundations. Vol. 10(2): 112-128, 1970.
[7] B.M. Das, Principles of Soil Dynamics, PWS Kent,
1992.
[8] R.W. Day, Foundation Engineering Handbook,
McGraw Hill, 2006.
[9] E.T. Selig and K. E. McKee, Static and dynamic
behavior of small footing, Journal Soil Mechanics and
Foundation Engineering, ASCE, 87(6), pp. 29-47, 1961.
[10] A.S. Vesic, D.C. Banks and J. M. Woodward, An
experimental study of dynamic bearing capacity of footing on
sand, Proc. 6th INCSMFE, Vol. 2, pp. 209-213, Montreal,
Canada, 1965.
[11] R. Richards, D.G. Elms and M. Budhu, Seismic
bearing capacity and settlement of foundations, Journal of
Geotechnical Engineering Division, ASC, 119(4) , pp
662-674,1993.