Shallow Foundation – Structural Design

7.6.2 Trapezoidal Combined Footings

A trapezoidal combined footing may be necessary if a rectangular combined footing
cannot provide the assumed uniform contact pressure. This condition will exist if the
column which has too limited space for a spread footing carries much larger load. In this
case the resultant of all column loads (including moments) will be much closer to the
heavier column, and doubling the centroid distance as done for the rectangular
combined footing will not provide sufficient footing length to reach the other column.
In order to obtain uniform contact pressure, the location of centroid can be adjusted to
agree with location of the resultant load by using a trapezoid-shaped base area with
dimensions L, B1 and B2,
where B2 is the larger width near or adjacent to the heavier column, as shown in Figure.
Using the known values of the base area A, footing length L and centroid distance𝑥́ , the
unique values of widths B1 and B2 are computed by solving the following two equations
simultaneously:
𝐵 +𝐵
𝐴= × 𝐿
2
𝐿 2𝐵 + 𝐵
𝑥́ =
3 𝐵 +𝐵

AL-Qasim Green University Page 52 of 53 Foundation Engineering

College of Water Resources Engineering Mr. Wissam Nadir
 Shallow Foundation – Structural Design

Equation of 𝑥́ reveals that the solution for B1 = 0 is a triangle and for B1 = B2 is a

rectangle. Therefore, a trapezoid solution exists only for (L/3) < 𝑥́ < (L/2) with the
minimum value of L as out-to-out of the column faces.

When the values of B1 and B2 are computed, the footing is treated similarly to the
rectangular combined footing (as a reinforced concrete beam).

However, it must be realized that the contact pressure per unit length of the footing will
vary linearly due to the varying width from B1 to B2. Therefore, the shear diagram will be
a second degree curve and the moment diagram will be a third-degree curve. In most
cases a trapezoidal combined footing would be used with only two columns as shown in
Figure above , but the solution proceeds similarly for more than two columns.

AL-Qasim Green University Page 53 of 53 Foundation Engineering

College of Water Resources Engineering Mr. Wissam Nadir