Oblique and eccentric bearing capacity of embedded strip footings using the method of rigorous characteristics

Abstract

The ultimate bearing capacity of strip footings is achieved by establishing the statically and kinematically admissible slip line field. The method of rigorous characteristics is applied to address the coupling of stress and velocity fields.Meanwhile, the stress discontinuity line is presented to account for the shear strength of embedded soils. The failure mechanism can be determined by solving the boundary value problems, and such the approach avoids the predefined slip surface. The proposed solutions show good agreement with the existing results, and they are mostly located between the upper and lower bound solutions of numerical limit analysis. The results demonstrate that the obliquely or eccentrically loaded boundary conditions sharply decrease the ultimate bearing capacity. Besides, the negligence of shear strength of embedded soils underestimates the ultimate bearing capacity of strip footings, and the associated flow rule yields the larger bearing capacity because of the overestimated soil strength.