NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF PLATE LOADING TEST BASED ON FIELD WORKS

Abstract

  In this work, the bearing capacity of soil is evaluated for a substation of residential compound in Amarah city by plate loading test. The study consists of two parts, the first part is the field work which includes soil tests in the field for the locations of two rectangular foundations of transformers with dimensions (for each foundation) of (3.5 m x 2.5 m), called (Point 1 and Point 2).Results showed that the settlements in the locations of points 1 and 2 are within the permitted settlement, and the allowable bearing capacity of soil in these locations is (9.1) T/m2. In the second part of the study, the tested soils by plate loading test are analyzed using nonlinear three dimensional finite element models. ANSYS (11.0) program is used to analyze the three dimensional model. The adopted finite element models are found to give results in an excellent agreement with the field results. For the same applied load, it is found that the ratio of theoretical to field values of settlement is 0.99 for the both points (1) and (2).The effect of size of plate of loading has been carried out to investigate its effect on the predicted finite element results. It is found that the settlement is increased with increasing the size of the loading surface.