Bearing capacity of embedded shallow foundations in spatially random soils with linearly increasing mean undrained shear strength

The objective of this paper is to investigate how the non-stationary features of soil properties affect the stochastic result of bearing capacity of embedded shallow foundations. Undrained shear strength was modelled as a non-stationary random field with mean value increasing with depth. A nonlinear finite element analysis combined with random fields generated by the Spectral Representation Method was employed to obtain the bearing capacity in random soils. Monte Carlo simulations were applied to obtain statistical characteristics of the resulting bearing capacity. The effect of non-stationary features of random soil properties on foundations with different embedment depths is discussed from three aspects, i.e. the failure mechanisms, the statistical characteristics of the bearing capacity factors, and the probability of failure of the foundation. Interestingly, it was found that the effects of non-stationary random soil properties on some of the three aspects change with the embedment depths of the foundations. Furthermore, some suggestions for foundation design are given, based on the obtained results.