STRESS ANALYSIS IN FOUNDATION ELEMENTS USING SOIL- STRUCTURE INTERACTION

Resumo

In the structural building design, it is usually considered the structure supported on a rigid
surface, which does not occur in real situations. It is necessary to analyze the soil deformations to
perform a structural determination closer to actual behavior. This work had as objective to analyze the
vertical and horizontal stresses of footing and pile cap subjected to normal force of compression. It
modeled with software that uses as a basis the Finite Element Method. It was analyzed in the footing
with fixed supports, that the loads imposed migrate to the supports just below the perimeter of the
column, without significant distribution and the strut-and-tie model was not verified. Therefore, the
foundations model on rigid supports does not satisfactorily represent the actual stresses behavior on the
element. In the footing supported on spring elements, more excellent distribution of the vertical
compressive stresses and the formation of tension and compression areas next to the column can be
observed in horizontal stresses analysis, describing the theoretical strut-and-tie model. The soil-structure

interaction analysis in the pile cap did not modify the stress behavior due to being supported as non-
deformable or in soil with high resistance. As usually are the supporting layers of piles, with the soil

spring stiffness coefficient high, considered as rigid. Therefore, the use of flexible supports made it
possible to analyze the stresses in the footing in an approximate way of real behavior, as observed in the
literature.