Upper bound ultimate bearing capacity of rough footings on anisotropic and nonhomogeneous clays

The upper bound ultimate bearing capacity of shallow rough footing on anisotropic and nonhomogeneous clays has been studied. A slip failure mechanism with mesh-like rigid blocks system has been constructed, in which the velocities changes on radial and tangent directions in transition area are allowable. Thus the more accurate failure modes and plastic velocity field are formed. The objective functions of bearing capacity factor on anisotropic and nonhomogeneous clays were obtained based on upper bound theorem; and the bearing capacity problems were transformed as a nonlinear optimizing problem. And the computer programming was compiled. From the numerical results and comparative analysis, it can be seen that the solutions presented in this paper compared reasonably well with the results presented in the existing literatures; and the proposed method gives better results than other methods. At last, the parameter analysis has been performed to investigate their influences on bearing capacity of footings on anisotropic and nonhomogeneous clays.