Relationship between shallow foundation shape and contact area, and the settlement in granular soils

The aim of this investigation is to discover the effects of foundation shape and contact area on foundation settlement. There is little research at the current time which relates the increase in size or scale effects to the settlement, with current research in the subject area being much more focused on bearnig capacity, [1], [2]. This is carried out using Oasys [3], a geotechnical software that predicts the settlement of foundations when a pressure load is applied to a foundation. The results showed a clear relationship between area of foundation and maximum settlement. As expected, as area increases so does the settlement, however, it is seen that there are clear differences between the effects from different shapes of foundations in terms of settlement values. It was discovered that the data shows similar patterns between different shapes, however the values for each shape do vary