Stress Distribution in Spread Footing Foundations - Numerical Analysis

In this paper stress distribution in different shapes of spread footing has been discussed and an optimization of footing dimensions has been proposed. For the analysis purposes comparison of stress distribution has been performed for six different shapes of spread footing. Spread footings has been divided into two groups, where the first contained foundations with rectangular base and in the second one circular base has been considered, respectively. In both groups three different shapes of spread footing have been analysed – prismatic/cylindrical, prism with sloped edges/cut-off cone and stepped footing. For each spread footing in the centre of their top surface a small part of column has been modelled. Presented in this paper comparative analysis has been limited only to the pure axial loading subjected to the top surface of columns. In order to perform numerical analyses SolidWorks Finite Element Method (FEM) based software has been chosen. Through the analysis it is shown that the best stress distribution for the further weight and shape optimization is obtained in sloped prism and cut-off cone. After the optimization process of the spread footing dimensions one obtained a reduction of approximately 90% of total weight, with acceptable stress value increase