RESEARCH ARTICLE


A Refined Formula for the Allowable Soil Pressure Using Shear Wave Velocities



S. S. Tezcan*, 1, Z. Ozdemir2
1 Civil Engineering, Bogazici University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey
2 Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey


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Creative Commons License
© 2011 Tezcan and Ozdemir.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Civil Engineering, Bogazici University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey; Tel: +902123526559; Fax: +902123526558; Mobile: +905323710340;


Abstract

Based on a variety of case histories of site investigations, including extensive bore hole data, laboratory testing and geophysical prospecting at more than 550 construction sites, an empirical formulation is proposed for the rapid determination of allowable bearing pressure of shallow foundations in soils and rocks. The proposed expression corroborates consistently with the results of the classical theory and is proven to be rapid, and reliable. Plate load tests have been also carried out at three different sites, in order to further confirm the validity of the proposed method. It consists of only two soil parameters, namely, the in situ measured shear wave velocity and the unit weight. The unit weight may be also determined with sufficient accuracy, by means of other empirical expressions proposed, using P or S - wave velocities. It is indicated that once the shear and P-wave velocities are measured in situ by an appropriate geophysical survey, the allowable bearing pressure as well as the coefficient of subgrade reaction and many other elasticity parameters may be determined rapidly and reliably.

Keywords: Shear wave velocity, shallow foundations, allowable bearing pressure, dynamic technique, soils and rocks..