UPPER BOUND SEISMIC STABILITYANALYSIS OF EMBEDDED FOOTINGS

The paper pertains to the pseudo-static seismic stability analysis for finding the bearing capacity of embedded strip footings subjected to both horizontal and vertical earthquake forces using upper bound limit theorem assuming single-sided Prandtl-like failure mechanism. The least upper bound value is found using optimization technique. Results are obtained by developing a MATLAB computer code, which is validated by comparing the results with similar solutions available in literature. The comparison shows that the obtained results for surface footings agree well with the available solutions. Bearing capacity is observed to increase with embedment ratio; for a given embedment ratio, it decreases with increasing seismic acceleration coefficient. These are in tune with the expected results.