A Numerical Study on the Performance of Composite Foundation System With Piles and Cushion

For the reason that composite foundation can fully realize the potential of bearing capacity of subsoil and reinforcement, it has been widely applied in modern foundation engineering of coastal area. However, knowledge towards the mechanism and the performance characteristics of composite foundation is not mature enough. Thus more intensive and further study is required on the design and construction methods. In this paper, elasto-plastic numerical computation is conducted by developing elasto-plastic FE model in plane stress state, together with adopting Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion to describe the elaso-plasticity of subsoil and Coulomb contact pair theory with penalty algorithm to simulate the discontinuous contact behavior of foundation and soil, as well as using infinite element in model boundary to avoid static boundary effect. Based on the elasto-plastic numerical model of composite foundation with piles and cushion used above, the characteristics of internal forces and deformation of composite foundation system including raft, cushion and piles are analyzed. Furthermore, the respective effect of raft foundation, cushion and piles on the durability and performance of whole composite foundation system is discussed. On the basis of computational results and theoretical analyses, several conclusion remarks are drawn to provide certain references for related construction and design practice.Copyright © 2010 by ASME