Upper Bound Analysis of the Effect of Footing Roughness on N_γ and the Failure Mechanism of a Strip Footing

摘要

The effect of footing roughness on the bearing capacity factor N and failure mechanism of a strip footing on pure sand were examined using an upper bound finite element method with rigid translatory moving elements (UBFEM-RTME). The analysis was performed with different combination values of the footing-sand friction angle () and the sand friction angle (phi). The magnitude of N is found to continuously increase with increasing /phi and phi. The obtained failure mechanism primarily consists of a completely curved trapped wedge and a mesh-like failure zone, with the exception of the case where /phi=0. The sizes of the failure zone and the curved wedge, briefly by four introduced geometric parameters, increase with an increase in /phi and phi. The values of /phi exhibit a particularly pronounced effect on N and associated failure mechanism, especially for high values of phi with small values of /phi. The present results match quite well with those results available in the literature.