Effect of Intermediate Principal Stress on the Bearing Capacity of Footings in Soft Rock

The bearing capacity for footings is a fundamental scientific problem in civil engineering. The evaluation of the bearing capacity of footings usually does not take into account the effect of the intermediate principal stress. In practice, the intermediate principal stress has certain influences on the strength of geomaterials (e.g., rock and soil) or concrete. In this paper, a series of numerical solutions are presented to evaluate the bearing capacity of footings in a soft rock foundation via a two-dimensional finite difference code (FLAC) with a strain hardening/softening constitutive model based on the unified strength theory (UST). The values of the bearing capacity factor N-c and N-gamma for strip, circular and square footings in a soft rock foundation were evaluated using the strain hardening/softening constitutive model. The effect of the intermediate principal stress on the bearing capacity of strip, circular and square footings in a soft rock foundation was analyzed. The results of the numerical computation show that the intermediate principal stress has a significant influence on the bearing capacity and failure mechanisms of a soft rock medium. The influence of the intermediate principal stress on the peak and residual values of the bearing capacity for a strip footing is much greater than for circular and square footings. Research works for the reasonable estimation of the bearing capacity of footings in soft rock are facilitated by this study.