China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Meeting the requirements of the Building Regulations
Published in Ray Tricker, Samantha Alford, Building Regulations Pocket Book, 2023
A foundation refers to the lower part of a building which is designed to not only distribute the weight of the new building evenly but also to provide a firm footing for it. Even though the foundations are not visible when the building has been completed, their design and structure are probably the most important parts of any building project.
Meeting the requirements of the Building Regulations – dwellings
Published in Ray Tricker, Samantha Alford, Building Regulations in Brief, 2022
The most common signs that foundations have problems are hairline cracks or fractures in walls, buckling or crumbling walls, evidence of water damage, sagging floors or warped ceilings, and badly fitting doors and windows.
Foundation Engineering
Published in P.K. Jayasree, K Balan, V Rani, Practical Civil Engineering, 2021
P.K. Jayasree, K Balan, V Rani
A foundation is that part of a structure which transmits the weight of the structure to the ground. All structures constructed on land are supported on foundations. A foundation is, therefore, a connecting link between the structure proper and the ground which supports it. The word “foundation” is derived from latin word fundare, meaning to set or ground on something solid. In other words, a foundation is an artificially laid base on which a structure is set or built up.
A numerical study on the behaviour of foundations resting on fibre reinforced soils using an innovative enhanced soil-fibre finite element
Published in Geomechanics and Geoengineering, 2022
Hamideh Mohammadi, Nader Hataf, Mehdi Veiskarami
The bearing capacity failure, excessive settlement and soil erosion are among major problems in the design of foundations. To date, a number of soil reinforcement techniques have been developed to overcome such problems. Examples include deploying continuous geosynthetics, e.g. geocells, geotextiles, geomembranes and discrete reinforcements such as fibres to improve the soil mechanical properties. Attempts have been made in recent years, however a few in numbers, to analyse composite environments such as fibre-reinforced soil media. Binquet and Lee (1975b) apparently were the firsts to study the effect of reinforcement on the bearing capacity of footings. Herrmann and Al-Yassin (1978) used both discrete and composite methods to model reinforced environments. Moroto and Hasegawa (1990) have studied the effect of soil reinforcement by utilising the finite element method (FEM).
Characterisation of geotechnical model uncertainty
Published in Georisk: Assessment and Management of Risk for Engineered Systems and Geohazards, 2019
This Spotlight paper presents a comprehensive review of load test data for various geo-structures and determines the ULS and SLS model statistics in a consistent way with clear references to the supporting databases. In particular, the authors compiled a generic database (PILE/2739) covering many foundation types installed in different soil types. The foundation types covered include small to large displacement piles (e.g. steel H-piles, torque-driven helical piles, driven cast-in-situ piles, and driven closed/open-end concrete/steel piles) and non-displacement piles (e.g. drilled shafts and ACIP piles). The resulting summary (Table 2) represents the most extensive and significant update of Table 3.7.5.1 in the JCSS Probabilistic Model Code (JCSS 2006) to date. It should be pointed out that the model statistics are applicable to any implementations of RBD such as the LRFD, the MRFD (Phoon, Kulhawy, and Grigoriu 2003), or the expanded RBD approach (Wang, Au, and Kulhawy 2011). These model statistics can be used within the First-Order Reliability Method (FORM) to derive a deterministic model partial factor at the design point as well.
Performance evaluation of geocell-reinforced pavements
Published in International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, 2019
Weak subgrades are the common problem in road construction. Whether it is a temporary access road or a permanent road built over a weak subgrade, a large deformation of the subgrade can lead to deterioration of the paved or unpaved surface. Geosynthetic materials such as geocells have been widely used to reinforce/stabilise the structures with unbound materials such as roads, slopes, retaining walls and embankments. Geocells completely encase the soil and provide all-round confinement, thus preventing the lateral spreading of the soil. Because of this, the soil – geocell layer acts as a stiff mat, distributing the load over a much larger area of the subgrade soil. This helps in reducing vertical and lateral deformations of the foundation soil to a large extent besides increasing the overall load carrying capacity of the foundation soil. Several studies have shown that geosynthetics can extend the service life of pavements (Potter and Currer 1981; Lawson 1992; Haliburton and Barron 1983; Webster and Watkins 1977; Giroud and Noiray 1981; Love 1984; Austin and Coleman 1993; Al-Qadi et al. 1994; Fannin and Sigurdsson 1996; Hufenus et al. 2006; Latha, Asha, and Hemalatha 2010; Veeresh, Mamatha, and Dinesh 2014; Mamatha and Dinesh 2017), reduce base course thickness for a given service life (Webster and Watkins 1977; Giroud and Noiray 1981; Love 1984; Bush, Jenner, and Bassett 1990; Sivakumar Babu and Kumar 2012) and delay rutting development (Potter and Currer 1981; Veeresh, Mamatha, and Dinesh 2014; Mamatha and Dinesh 2017). However, in some studies it is reported that the designed pavement thicknesses are very important and cannot be compromised (Al-Qadi et al. 2012; Veeresh 2013).