Soil structure interaction for a continuous strip footing

This thesis is directed towards the experimental stressanalysis of a continuous strip footing resting on elasticfoundation using photoelasticity.A rational approach to the design of foundations restingon soil media should take into account both the deformationalcharacteristics of the soil medium and the flexibility of thefoundation.It should be appreciated that a complete analysis ofthe soil-foundation problem should also take into account theinteraction between the foundation and super-structure, i.e.the manner in which the structural stiffness is transmittedto the foundation.In this thesis, an extensive experimental testingprogram was conducted on three series of photoelastic contin-uous footing model s of two spans wi th double canti levers,having cantilever to span ratios of 0.5, 0.33 and 0.09. Ineach series four models were tested, having four differentrigidities of the footing represented by the depth to spanratio which took the values of 0.25, 0.4, 0.6 and 1.0. Thefooting was axisymmetrically loaded by relati vely deep steelbeam. smoothly resting over the three col umns, to represent