Numerical study of bearing capacity for a circular footing
The bearing capacity of a vertically loaded, shallow and strip footing is one of the problems that has been widely studied by various methods. However, most of these studies were carried out for two-dimensional configurations. This paper focuses on the bearing capacity of a three-dimensional circular footing. A series of numerical computations using the finite-difference code, FLAC3D, was carried out to evaluate the soil-bearing capacity for vertically loaded, rigid circular footing for both smooth and rough interfaces. The adopted approach involves a numerical solution of the equations governing elastic-plastic soils with an associative flow. The FLAC3D code is utilized to obtain the three bearing capacity factors for a wide range of values of the friction angle. The bearing capacity and included shape factors, which are presented in the form of graphs, are compared against existing expressions and numerical solutions.