Die Grenzen des linear elastischen Baugrunds in der Boden-Bauwerk-Interaktion

Abstract

The limits of the linear elastic ground in soil-structure interaction

Soil-structure interaction is a crucial aspect of structural analysis, relevant not only in the design of civil engineering structures but also in foundation systems of buildings, towers, industrial floors, and container terminal slabs. A key concern in this context is differential settlements, which act as imposed deformations on structures, affecting both the internal forces within the foundation system—such as the internal forces of a shallow foundation slab—and the stress distribution in the superstructure. To consistently account for these effects, the chosen soil-structure interface must be capable of accurately representing the distribution of differential settlements or the curvature of the settlement profile. In geotechnical engineering, advanced nonlinear material models are commonly employed to realistically describe the complex settlement behavior of soils. In contrast, structural engineering often relies on linear elastic approaches. This paper investigates whether a linear elastic parameter set (E, υ) can be defined for a uniformly loaded foundation slab that, under specific boundary conditions, satisfactorily reproduces the settlement distribution of a geotechnical nonlinear calculation.