Estimation of footing settlement in sand

The settlement of foundations under working load conditions is an important design consideration. Well-designed foundations induce stress-strain states in the soil that are neither in the linear elastic range nor in the range usually associated with perfect plasticity. Thus, in order to accurately predict working settlements, analyses that are more realistic than simple elastic analyses are required. The settlements of footings in sand are often estimated based on the results of in situ tests, particularly the standard penetration test (SPT) and the cone penetration test (CPT). In this article, we analyze the load-settlement response of vertically loaded footings placed in sands using both the finite element method with a nonlinear stress-strain model and the conventional elastic approach. Calculations are made for both normally consolidated and heavily overconsolidated sands with various relative densities. For each case, the cone penetration resistance qc is calculated using CONPOINT, a widely tested program that allows computation of qc based on cavity expansion analysis. Based on these analyses, we propose a procedure for the estimation of footing settlement in sands based on CPT results.