Proceedings of the
8th International Symposium on Geotechnical Safety and Risk (ISGSR)
14 – 16 December 2022, Newcastle, Australia
Editors: Jinsong Huang, D.V. Griffiths, Shui-Hua Jiang, Anna Giacomini, Richard Kelly
doi:10.3850/978-981-18-5182-7_03-021-cd

Reliability Analysis of a Shallow Foundation Considering Soil Spatial Variability

A.T. Siacara1,4,a, H.M. Kroetz2, A.T. Beck3 and M.M. Futai4,5

1Dept. of Structural and Geotechnical Eng. (PEF), University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil.

2Center for Marine Studies, Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Paraná, Brazil.

3Dept. of Structural Eng., University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil.

4Dept. of Structural and Geotechnical Eng. (PEF), University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil.

5GeoInfraUSP Research Group, University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil.

aadriantorricosiacara@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Random fields are widely used for describing the soil spatial variability in geotechnical engineering. The consideration of stochastic variability with spatial dependence in soil parameters is a complex problem, which renders the analysis of hundreds or thousands of random variables. Thus, it is not usually performed, and simplifications are often adopted. This article presents four different analyses to investigate the influence of the autocorrelation length on the bearing capacity of a shallow strip foundation, when random fields are explicitly considered. The studied soil property is undrained shear strength (Su) randomized with the random field theory. The Random field approach integrates the Karhunen-Loeve expansion method with Monte Carlo simulations (MCS) to develop a probabilistic analysis. The software OPTUM G2 which follows the finite element limit analysis (FELA) method was used to perform all deterministic and field analysis.

Keywords: Random field, probability of failure, spatial variability, foundation.


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