nicely deep soil, and these values are also shown in Table 6.1. I f raft w ill be significant.
raft w ill be significant. However for flexible light framed stuc-
the layer is assumed to be very deep, the computed deflections
are larger as should be expected (see Figure 6.3), but the mo­
ments per unit length are only very slightly in error because the
curvatures in the raft are similar to those of the 20m deep case.
I f the soil layer is only Sm deep instead of 20m deep, then for
the full raft, the deflection profile along A -A ' is very different
again with the deflections at the edges greater than at the centre
(see Figure 6.3). The values for the shallow soil layer are also
shown in Table 6.1. Although the deflections are again signifi­
cantly affected by layer depth, the table shows that the moments
in the raft are not as greatly affected.
T a b le 6 .1 . M o m e n t s a n d d e f l e c ti o n s in ra ft.
S in g le
F u ll r a f t F u ll r a f t
Q u a n tity s tr ip
li = 2 0 m h= 5m
h = 20m
S e tt le m e n t a t C
9 8 .8 7 2 .5 3 9 .8
(m m )
S e tt le m e n t a t B
76 45 35
(m m )
Ma a t C M N m /m 2 .8 2 .4 2 .4
M„ a t C M N m /m 2 .3 1.9 1.9
Ma a t B M N m /m 0 .2 4 0 .3 0 .2
a t B M N m /m 0 .3 1 0 .3 9 0 .3
6.5 The effects o f structure-foundation-soil interaction
The examples above have been given for a raft alone without the
stiffening effect of any structure that is supported by the raft.
Methods of incorporating the stiffness of a structure into a raft
analysis has been examined by several authors including Lee and
Brown (1972), Lee (1975), Poulos (1975b) and Brown and Yu
(1986).
Fraser and W ardle (1975) presented results for a 2 bay portal
frame where they showed that the differential deflections in the
frame depended on the stiffness of the frame. Brown (1975) has
also shown, for a strip raft beneath a 2-dimensional frame, that
the relative stiffness of the structure has an effect on differential
displacement in the raft. Zhang and Small (1994) analysed 3-
dimensional framed buildings on raft foundations, and demon­
strated that the larger the relative stiffness of the building frame,
the smaller the differential deflections in the raft.
Brown and Y u (1986) also showed that as a building is con­
structed, the stiffness o f the overall structure increases and this
affects the differential displacement in the raft. Gusmau Filho
and Guimaraes (1997) have also looked at construction sequence
and have noted that the loads in columns reach a maximum (or
minimum) value as more stories are added to the building, lead­
ing to the idea of the building reaching a “lim it stiffness”.
An example showing how incorporation of the stiffness of the
structure into the analysis can improve the predicted behaviour
of a foundation has been presented by Lopes and Gusmao
(1991). For a 15 story structure in Brazil supported by a system
of strip footings, the settlement distribution was shown to be
predicted more closely if the stiffness o f the structure is included
in the settlement analysis (see Figure 6.4).
Although all of the authors mentioned above have found that
the structural stiffness does have an effect on the raft’s behav­
iour, Yao and Zhang (1985) concluded that this was not so. They
carried out analyses of two-dimensional building frames on raft
foundations where the raft and soil were analysed using finite
element techniques. They found that as the “rigidity” of the
frame members increased, that it had only a marginal effect on
the differential settlement and forces in the raft.
It may therefore be concluded that the stiffness of a structure
w ill influence the calculated settlements o f a raft foundation, but
this depends on the stiffness of the structure relative to the raft.
For buildings with rigid shear walls, the stiffening effect on the
tures, the effect of the structure on a thick raft, w ill be small.
6.6 Piled raft foundations
Where loads on a foundation are excessively large for a raft
alone, the raft can be used in conjunction with piles. Both the
raft and the piles transfer load to the soil in this case, and the
piles can be designed to carry loads that are well below their
failure load, or can be designed to fa il so that they are carrying
maximum load or close to maximum load (Hansbo and Kall-
strOm 1983).
Piles do not need to be placed uniformly over the whole raft,
but can be judiciously placed so as to lim it differential deflec­
tions in the foundation. For example, Horikoshi and Randolph
F u ll
(1997) have shown that the optimum design of a piled raft car­
ra ft
rying a uniform load would involve piles placed over the central
h —°°
16 to 25% of the raft area.
148 Piled raft foundations may be designed using simple tech­
niques or more complex techniques (as for raft foundations), and
125 again it is necessary to know whether these techniques are pro­
viding reasonable estimates of the behaviour of the foundation.
2 .8
2 .3
0 .2 2 6.7 Soil treated as elastic continua
0.3 1
In order to analyse piled rafts in a simplified fashion, many re­
searchers have treated the soil as an elastic continuum and com­
puted the interaction between the raft, the soil and the piles
through the use of the theory o f elasticity. For example, Poulos
(1994a) assumed that the forces acting down the shaft of a pile
could be treated as a series of uniform shear stresses acting over
sections of the pile shaft. The base load was treated as a uniform
load over a circular region. The effects of these loads on other
piles was computed using the theory of elasticity and M indilin’s
solution for a subsurface load.
Hain and Lee (1978), Ta and Small (1996) and Chow (1986)
have used similar techniques to compute the interaction that oc­
curs between the elements o f a piled raft foundation, treating the
soil as a continuum
It is of interest to note the accuracy of these techniques, be­
cause they treat the forces along the pile shaft as being forces
applied to a continuum (i.e., they do not consider the presence of
the pile when calculating the soil displacements. To examine
this, a 3-dimensional finite element analysis was undertaken us­
ing the layout shown in Figure 6.5a. O nly one quarter of the
problem needs to be considered (as shown in the figure) due to
symmetry, and the side boundaries need to be far enough away
so as not to affect the results.
The problem involves a raft supported by nine piles in a soil
having a uniform elastic modulus of 20 MPa. The modulus of
the raft and piles is taken as 20,000 MPa respectively, and the
Poisson’s ratios of the soil, raft and piles are taken as 0.4, 0.2
and 0.2, respectively. The raft is 3.9 m square in plan and its
thickness is 0.3 m. The pile length was chosen to be 15 m and
the thickness of the soil layer was taken as 65 m. The overhang
of the raft (around the perimeter) is one pile diameter and the raft
is in full contact with the soil.
The problem was analysed firstly by use of the 3-dimensional
finite element program, and then with a finite layer based pro­
gram that uses finite element analysis for the raft and piles and
finite layer theory (for layered elastic continua) for the soil
(Zhang and Small, 2000).
Loads of 100 kPa are applied to the raft over two areas as
shown in Figure 6.5b as this is a more severe test of the program
with the piles being subjected to lateral loads as well as vertical
loads. For the finite element method, the pile sections are as­
sumed to be 0.3 m square, whereas for the finite layer method,
the pile sections are assumed to be circular with an equivalent
pile diameter (D) of 0.3385 m. The ratio of the centre-to-centre
spacing to the equivalent pile diameter is 4.43.
2577