Vrettos, C. (1998). GeÂotechnique 48, No.
5, 703±707
TECHNICAL NOTE
Elastic settlement and rotation of rectangular footings on non-
homogeneous soil
C . V R E T TO S 
KEYWORDS: Elasticity; footings/foundations; numer-
ical modelling and analysis; settlement; soil/structure
interaction; stiffness.
INTRODUCTION
Settlement and rotation of deformation-sensitive
foundations under working loads can be deter-
mined by means of linear-elastic theory provided
that appropriate values are selected for the elastic
soil parameters. In soils, increasing overburden
pressure causes stiffness to become greater with
depth. While this effect can be slight or negligible
in overconsolidated clays, it is an important factor
in assessing foundation behaviour in normally con-
solidated clays and sands. The importance of in-
corporating soil non-homogeneity into geotechnical
analysis has been recognized in the past. Detailed
accounts of the early works are given by Gibson
(1974) and Selvadurai (1996). The fundamental
work by Gibson (1967) on the response of a lin-
early non-homogeneous incompressible soil with
zero surface modulus to a vertical surface load
initiated a number of subsequent studies where the
restrictions of incompressibility or/and vanishing
surface modulus have been removed and various
cases of vertical surface or interior loading of a
half-space have been considered (Gibson & Sills,
1971; Brown & Gibson, 1972; Awojobi & Gibson,
1973; Rajapakse, 1990). The case of a layer of
®nite depth has also been considered (Gibson et
al., 1971). The derived solutions provided the basis
for the semi-analytical treatment of the respective
contact problems for ¯exible circular footings
(Brown, 1974; Rajapakse & Selvadurai, 1991) and
for ¯exible rectangular footings (Dempsey & Li,
1989a). Finite-element techniques have also been
employed to investigate rigid or ¯exible circular
Manuscript received 7 November 1997; revised manu-
script accepted 17 March 1998.
Discussion on this technical note closes 1 January 1999;
for further information see p. ii.
 Technical University of Berlin.
703
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plates on the surface of a Gibson soil (Carrier &
Christian, 1973; Boswell & Scott, 1975) by using
appropriate bottom and side boundaries for the
half-space approximation.
Another class of analytical non-homogeneous
soil models deals with sublinear or quadratic power
laws for the modulus variation with depth. Solu-
tions of contact problems derived for the former
case by Booker et al. (1985) and Oner (1990)
require vanishing modulus at the surface while the
latter case treated by Gazetas (1980) implies a very
strong non-homogeneity, not typical of soils. A
further category of solutions refers to semi-analyti-
cal and numerical methods for multilayered soils
whereby the continuous modulus variation is ap-
proximated by a staircase pro®le. Rigid circular
footings on a linearly non-homogeneous deep stra-
tum on rigid base have been studied by Rowe &
Booker (1981), while Waas et al. (1988) treated
circular footings on the same soil model by replac-
ing the rigid base by a half-space approximation.
A realistic and versatile analytical soil model
with ®nite elastic moduli at both the surface and at
great depths was adopted by the author to solve
®rst the dynamic and later on the static Boussinesq
problem (Vrettos, 1991, 1998). For the same mod-
el, Selvadurai (1996) treated the contact problem
of the half-space identation by a rigid circular
foundation by numerically solving the associated
integral equation.
This brief review reveals that the vast majority
of contact problem solutions refer to plane strain
or axisymmetric conditions. Of engineering inter-
est, however, are rectangular footings, which are
generally more complicated to analyse. In addition,
there is a lack of simple equations encompassing
the key parameters of the soil-foundation system,
which would help the engineer in quantifying the
effects on non-homogeneity.
The aim of this paper is to satisfy these require-
ments by presenting simple algebraic formulae for
elastic settlement and rotation of rigid rectangular
footings on a compressible soil with continuous yet
bounded depth-variation of elastic modulus which
are derived from the rigorous solution of the as-
sociated contact problem.
 704 VRETTOS

ANALYSIS OF THE CONTACT PROBLEM transform domain. The vertical surface displace-
The problem considered is depicted in Fig. 1. A ment w due to a point load Q is given in depen-
rigid rectangular footing with side lengths 2b and dency on the distance r as
2a(b > a) resting on a non-homogeneous soil is Q
loaded by a vertical force P and moments M x and w(r) ˆ Fzz (r, í, G) (2)
M y . The induced settlement and rotations are de- G0 r
noted by ä and èx and è y, respectively. The elastic where
soil is de®ned by a constant Poisson's ratio r ˆ rá (3)
0 < í , 0:5 and shear modulus varying with depth
z such as and
G(z) ˆ G0 ‡ (G1 ÿ G0 )(1 ÿ eÿáz ) G0 < G1 G1
Gˆ (4)
(1) G0
where G0 and G1 are the moduli at the surface The function Fzz (r) is depicted in Fig. 2 for
and at in®nite depth, respectively, and á describes different values of Poisson's ratio and for given G.
the rate of shear modulus increase and is referred At the lower limit as á ! 0, all curves converge to
to as the gradient of non-homogeneity. The contact the solution of a homogeneous case with G ˆ G0 ,
between the soil and the footing is assumed to be while at the upper limit as á ! 1 the curves
frictionless. The method adopted for solving the asymptotically tend to the solution of the homo-
boundary value problem consists of subdividing the geneous case with G ˆ G1 .
contact area into a ®nite number of uniformly Of particular interest is the in¯uence function
loaded quadratic elements and imposing the rigid for the loaded element, that is, the de¯ection due
body translation or rotation condition for determin- to a uniform surface pressure q applied over a
ing the unknown stress magnitude at each element, rectangular area 2a 3 2b, since it represents at the
cf. Dempsey & Li (1989b). The in¯uence function same time the response of a ¯exible footing. In
for the displacement at the centre of any one of homogeneous soil with shear modulus G0 the
the elements due to a uniform stress applied at central de¯ection of the loaded area wA is given
another element is obtained by integration of the by
fundamental solution for the response of the half- qa
space to a surface point load. For the non-homo- wA ˆ (1 ÿ í)I A (5)
G0
geneous soil model this solution has been pre-
sented by Vrettos (1998) by applying classical where 2a is the least dimension of the loaded area
integral transform techniques and the extended and I A is an in¯uence factor that depends only on
power series method to derive the solution in the the aspect ratio b=a. In the non-homogeneous case,
however, I A depends further on Poisson's ratio í,
on the degree on non-homogeneity G and on the
x normalized non-homogeneity gradient á de®ned as

Mx
y
2a 1.0
My

2b ν 5 0.2
ν 5 0.3
ν 5 0.4

0.8
P
Fzz 2π/(1 2 ν)

y 0.6

G (z )
z
0.4
0 1 2 3 4 5
r

Fig. 2. Function Fzz (r) de®ned by equation (2) for

Fig. 1. The problem under consideration G ˆ 2 and various values of Poisson's ratio í

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 RECTANGULAR FOOTINGS ON NON-HOMOGENEOUS SOIL 705
á ˆ aá (6) Similar expressions have been derived by
Gazetas (1991) for arbitrarily shaped footings. For
The effects of non-homogeneity on I A are illu- non-homogeneous soil these in¯uence factors
strated in Fig. 3 in dependency on the aspect ratio further depend on the non-homogeneity parameters
b=a for given í. The homogeneous case is recov- and on Poisson's ratio.
ered when G ˆ 1 or á ! 0. The accuracy of the numerical method adopted
in the present study depends markedly on the
degree of discretization of the contact area. N
NUMERICAL RESULTS denotes the number of elements in the direction of
An exact analytical solution for the rigid footing the shorter side of the footing. It can be shown that
problem is known only for a circular base shape the results fall on a straight line when plotted for a
and homogeneous soil conditions. Numerical re- range of meshes against 1=N . The correct solution
sults for a rectangular base shape have been pre- is assumed to be given by extrapolation to the limit
sented by several authors. Settlement ä and ro- 1=N ! 0. Selected numerical results for homo-
tation è are expressed as geneous and non-homogeneous soil are sum-
P 1ÿí marized in Table 1. Comparison of the results for
äˆ (7) the homogeneous case with the approximate ex-
G0 a I ä pressions (10)±(12) shows very good agreement.
My 1ÿí The effects of non-homogeneity may be intro-
èy ˆ (8) duced in equations (7)±(9) either by using the
G0 a3 I èy
respective in¯uence factors for the non-homoge-
Mx 1 ÿ í neous case or by keeping the in¯uence factors of
èx ˆ (9) the homogeneous case, equations (10)±(12), and
G0 a3 I èx
replacing the shear modulus G0 by an appropriate
where G0 is the shear modulus of the homoge- value Geq depending on the deformation mode, that
neous soil and I ä, I èy , and I èx are in¯uence factors is,
depending only on the aspect ratio b=a. The effects
of Poisson's ratio are represented by the factor Geq ˆ G0 S(í, G, á, b=a) (13)
(1 ÿ í), just like in the corresponding fundamental
solution for the surface response of the half-space The latter approach is adopted here since it
soil model. Pais & Kausel (1988) summarized directly determines the effective stiffness of an
available solutions and proposed the following `equivalent homogeneous' soil. For homogeneous
approximate expressions for the in¯uence factors: soil with shear modulus G0 the correction factor
:
S ˆ 1. The in¯uence of Poisson's ratio on S in-
I ä ˆ 1:6 ‡ 3:1(b=a)0 75 (10) creases with increasing degree of non-homogeneity
I èy ˆ 0:8 ‡ 3:2(b=a) (11) G. For all practical purposes, however, the depen-
:
dency on í can be approximately represented by
I èx ˆ 0:27 ‡ 3:73(b=a)2 4 (12) the solution for an average value í ˆ 0:3 and the
factor (1 ÿ í) of the homogeneous case, as shown
for the point load solution in Fig. 2. The numerical
2.2 results demonstrated that the in¯uence of the de-
gree of contact area discretization on the correction
factor S is insigni®cant, and a mesh with eight
elements along the shorter side has been used for
1.8
all computations of the parametric study. The varia-
α50 tion of the correction factor S with the aspect ratio
b=a is illustrated in Fig. 4 for selected values of the
IA 1.4 non-homogeneity parameters. Results for the cor-
α 5 0.2 rection factor for circular footings on linearly non-
homogeneous soil are given by Waas et al. (1988).
Geq may be also interpreted as the shear mod-
1.0
ulus according to equation (1) at the so-called
α 5 1.0 equivalent depth zeq . By normalizing zeq with
respect to a, the following approximate formulae
0.6 have been developed on the basis of the results
1 2 3 4 5
b /a obtained herein:
Settlement ä:
Fig. 3. In¯uence factor versus aspect ratio. The solid
zeq :
line is for the homogeneous case, the dashed lines are ˆ 1:1á ÿ1=3 Gÿ1=4 (b=a)0 3 (14)
for the non-homogeneous case with G ˆ 2 and í ˆ 0:3 a

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 706 VRETTOS

Table 1. In¯uence factors

b=a Iä I èy I èx
1 4´60 4´15 4´15
Gˆ1 2 6´68 7´35 20´08
3 8´49 10´52 52´27
5 11´75 16´83 180´99
Gˆ2 1 5´88 4´58 4´58
á ˆ 0:2 2 8´92 8´20 23´24
í ˆ 0:3 3 11´66 11´80 62´48
5 16´69 18´97 225´95
Gˆ2 1 7.32 5´54 5´54
áˆ1 2 11´06 10´01 29´01
í ˆ 0:3 3 14´36 14´44 78´73
5 20´31 23´28 285´55
Gˆ3 1 6´90 4´95 4´95
á ˆ 0:2 2 10´75 8´93 25´95
í ˆ 0:3 3 14´25 12´89 71´15
5 20´75 20´79 263´81
Gˆ3 1 9´70 6´73 6´73
áˆ1 2 14´99 12´28 36´74
í ˆ 0:3 3 19´67 17´80 101´88
5 28´14 28´80 378´05

1.8 curve ®tting techniques for 0 , á < 2, 1 , G < 10

and b=a < 5, the relative error being less than a
(δ) few per cent.
1.6
Examining the equivalent depth for square foot-
ings it can be seen that for an intermediate range
(θx)
0:15 , á < 2 and 1:5 < G < 5 the values for the
settlement are approximately 2±3 times larger than
S 1.4 (θy) for rotation. This is due to the fact that vertical
loading reaches much deeper, and accordingly stif-
(δ) fer, soil regions than moment loading. Values of
1.2
(θx) the equivalent depth for settlement then range be-
tween 0:6 and 2 times the footing half-width.
(θy) Finally, the settlement of a rigid footing ä is
compared with the central de¯ection wA of a
1.0
1 2 3 4 5
uniformly loaded area, which may simulate a ¯ex-
b /a ible footing, with the same average applied stress
in both cases. It is found that the ratio wA =ä
Fig. 4. Correction factor S for settlement (ä) and remains almost unaffected by the non-homogeneity,
rotation (è y , è x ) versus aspect ratio for í ˆ 0:3,
G ˆ 2. The dashed lines are for á ˆ 0:2; the solid and the value 1´25 often used in practice can be
lines are for á ˆ1 taken as an average for b=a < 5.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
The application of the formulae given above is
Rotation èy : demonstrated by the following example. Consider a
zeq : rectangular footing 4:0 3 2:5 m resting on a non-
ˆ 0:47(áG)ÿ1=6 (b=a)0 14 (15) homogeneous soil with í ˆ 0:4. The shear modulus
a
pro®le is described by equation (1) with G0 ˆ
Rotation èx : 21 MPa, G ˆ 2:9 and á ˆ 0:36 mÿ1 . The footing
zeq : is loaded by a central vertical force P ˆ 1:5 MN.
ˆ 0:47(aG)ÿ1=6 (b=a)0 56 (16) The approximate formula (14) gives for the equiva-
a
lent depth zeq ˆ 1:58 m. The corresponding value
The above expressions have been derived by of the equivalent shear modulus from equation (1)

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 RECTANGULAR FOOTINGS ON NON-HOMOGENEOUS SOIL
is Geq ˆ 38:3 MPa. Finally, substituting this value
of the shear modulus into equation (7) and the
value of the aspect ratio into equation (10) gives
for the settlement ä ˆ 3:1 mm.
CONCLUSIONS
Simple algebraic formulae have been presented
for estimating elastic settlement or rotation of
rectangular footings on non-homogeneous soil. Al-
though these formulae have been derived from the
solution for perfect rigid footings, they would yield
suf®ciently accurate estimates of the average dis-
placement and rotation of ¯exible footings. In
addition, they may be used in the interpretation of
in situ plate load tests, as benchmarks for numer-
ical codes involving discrete soil models, and as
®rst approximations of the stiffnesses of dynami-
cally loaded foundations.
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