Application of probabilistic methods to characterize soil variability and their effects on bearing capacity and settlement of shallow foundations: state of the art

This paper presents the applications of probabilistic methods to analyze the load-displacement behavior of shallow foundations supported by uncertain and spatially variable soils. The paper describes the types and sources of uncertainties in soil properties that dictate the bearing capacity and settlement of shallow foundations and characterizes their probabilistic distributions. General probabilistic analysis methods that are commonly used in foundation engineering applications such as first order second moment (FOSM) method, tornado diagram method, Monte Carlo (MC) simulation method, random finite element method (RFEM), and reliability-based design (RBD) method are briefly described. A thorough summary of the applications of these methods in determining the probabilistic bearing capacity, settlement, and differential settlement of shallow foundations from the research literature is presented.