Book Title: Fundamentals of foundation engineering and their applications

Book Description

This resource is primarily based on teaching material developed by the author over several years for courses (including CIVL4201/6201 Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, and CIVL4571/6571 Geotechnical Engineering Project) offered by the University of Newcastle, Australia. It builds upon fundamentals of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering introduced elsewhere, and it assumes that the reader has some familiarity with basic soil mechanics concepts. The resource is focused on application of fundamental soil mechanics concepts to practical Geotechnical Engineering tasks, such as: interpretation of geotechnical investigation results, design of shallow foundations under serviceability and ultimate limit state conditions, and analysis and design of deep foundations. In addition to the above, the resource includes a brief introduction to Geoenvironmental Engineering, concentrating on the problem of soil and groundwater contamination, the description of relevant remediation techniques and the demonstration of simple methods for the design of remediation facilities.

The analytical and empirical state-of-practice and state-of-the-art methodologies covered in this resource conform (or have been adapted by the author) to the pertinent Australian Standards, which are extensively referenced in the text, whereas normative design concepts such as the Load and Resistance Factor Design are demonstrated, via their application in numerous worked examples.

In parallel, the use of numerical methods in Geotechnical and Foundation Engineering is introduced, by means of several example problems treated with the industry-standard finite element code PLAXIS. Emphasis is not put on linear and non-linear finite element theory or advanced numerical modelling techniques and soil constitutive models, but rather on the use of numerical methods to tackle fundamental Geotechnical (and Geoenvironmental) Engineering problems, and on key modeling issues encountered in everyday practice. The concept of using simpler, analytical methods to validate numerical analysis results and guide the development of more complex, real-world models is underlined.