Foundation Design

Foundation plays a critical role in ensuring the stability and safety of the building, bridges, walls or any other miscellaneous structures like gantries, barriers, light poles etc. In general, the foundation must be designed to withstand the loads imposed on it by the structure, such as the weight of the building/superstructure, the occupants, and any additional loads like furniture or snow. The main purpose of providing foundation to a building is to distribute the weight of the structure on a sufficiently large area of the substratum.
The primary goal of foundation construction is to guarantee a building or any other superstructure’s structural stability. The foundation must support the total weight of the structure and be safely transferred to the bedrock or underlying soil.

TYPES

SHALLOW FOUNDATIONS

A shallow foundation is a type of foundation that transfers structural load to the earth very near to the surface, rather than to a subsurface layer or a range of depths.

DEEP FOUNDATIONS

A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. Few types of deep foundations are as following.

• Basements
• Buoyancy Rafts
• Caissons
• Shaft Foundations
• Pile Foundations

There are several types of piles with respect to construction e.g. bored piles, CFA piles, driven piles, steel tube piles, micropiles, sheet piles, screw piles etc.
Piles are also defined based on their design basis e.g. friction piles, end bearing piles, combined friction and end bearing and compaction piles.
The type of pile and its design is decided based on the ground conditions, loading, purpose, constructability, groundwater conditions and space available.
For example: Precast driven piles may be best suitable for some ground conditions where refusal is anticipated at depth of ~10 m versus bored piles. Similarly, CFA piles may be best suited for certain ground conditions where groundwater is shallow and pile lengths are not very long.

GEOCONSOL SERVICES:

At GEOCONSOL, we deliver a tailored suite of the following services to accommodate project geology, complexity, diverse design solutions, and safety requirements.

• Preliminary review of the ground conditions
• Advice on additional geotechnical information required as per Project Specifications or Standards
• Advice on suitability of foundation type
• Tender design advice of foundations for buildings, bridges, retaining walls, noise walls, barriers, light poles
• Detailed design advice of foundations for buildings, bridges, retaining walls, noise walls, barriers, light poles
• Construction phase services including verification of ground conditions adopted in foundation design, insitu testing to verify ground conditions and reporting.
• Foundation design optimization
• Independent review of footings design by others
• Proof Engineering

GEOCONSOL has certified resources to provide the above services.