Comparison of theoretical ultimate bearing capacity of cohesionless soils with experimental and field data

Abstract EN

Estimation of the ultimate bearing capacity of the soil supporting foundation is one of the important requirements to develop safe design of foundations.

There are many methods used to estimate bearing capacity of soil such as theoretical, empirical and field tests.

There are different methods proposed to estimate the theoretical ultimate bearing capacity.

In this work, a statistical analysis is carried out to compare the obtained results using theoretical equations with the results of experimental and field tests.

Data of ninety seven experimental and field tests on cohesionless soils were used to conduct this analysis.

The acceptance of the results has been studied for theoretical equations.

This revealed that all theoretical equations can be used to estimate ultimate bearing capacity.

Whereas, the results of statistical tests showed that the results of Meyerhof’s bearing capacity equation gives more accurate results than that obtained by other theoretical equations (Terzaghi, Hansen and Vesic’ equations).