Impact of adjacent footings on immediate settlement of shallow footings

When the settlement of a footing under a structure is estimated by considering the bearing pressure of that footing only, the estimated value of the settlement may not be good enough since the other neighboring footings are going to effect the settlement of the footing under consideration also. Thus, in the settlement estimation of a footing, the effect of neighboring footings must be considered. In this study, impact of adjacent footings is considered on the estimation of elastic settlement of shallow foundations. In the estimation of elastic (immediate) settlement, the Schmertmann’s method that is a very popular method in the elastic settlement estimation of shallow foundations is employed. In order to consider effect of neighboring footings on elastic settlement of main footing in different configurations, a MATLAB script has been generated. Elastic settlements of the various configurations are estimated by the script and several conclusions have been reached.