Geotechnical Engineering · Course
Foundation Engineering
How foundations carry load, how much they move, and what the calculation cannot tell you.
Every structure ends at the ground. This course covers how a foundation transfers load into soil and how far it moves doing so — bearing capacity and settlement of pads and rafts, then the behaviour of piles: load transfer, capacity in clay and sand, groups, downdrag and lateral load. It teaches the mechanics in full, and it is candid about the parts that are not settled. The bearing capacity factor N_γ has no agreed form. The adhesion factor α is quoted between 0.3 and 1.0 by different authorities. A limiting shaft stress may be a soil effect or an artefact of how the tests were done. Where the profession disagrees, this course says so and shows you how much the disagreement is worth.
Who it is for
- Civil and geotechnical engineers moving from soil mechanics into foundation design
- Structural engineers who specify foundations and want to understand what the geotechnical report is saying
- Graduates and students following a foundation engineering module
- Engineers returning to piling after time away from it
What you should already know
- Effective stress, shear strength and consolidation — the Soil Mechanics course covers these
- Comfortable with equilibrium, and with rearranging formulae
- Some exposure to site investigation data (SPT, CPT) is helpful but not assumed
- No previous foundation design is assumed
The syllabus
Eighteen modules in four stages: the shallow foundation problem, the ways real ground and real loading complicate it, movement, and then the whole of pile behaviour.
The shallow foundation problem
- 01Open →
What a foundation has to do
Two requirements, not one — and the second is usually what decides the size.
- 02Open →
Choosing a foundation
Shallow, deep, or change the ground — and how the choice is actually made.
- 03Open →
How a footing fails
The mechanism under the equation — and why it is exponential in friction.
Real ground, real loading
- 05Open →
Shape, depth and inclination
The corrections that turn a strip-footing equation into a real foundation.
- 06Open →
Eccentric and inclined loading
When the load is not in the middle — and what the footing does about it.
- 07Open →
Groundwater and layered ground
Two things the textbook equation assumes away, and both of them matter.
- 08Open →
Bearing capacity from field tests
From a blow count to a bearing pressure — and what happens to the uncertainty on the way.
Movement
- 09Open →
Immediate settlement of shallow foundations
The calculation is easy. Knowing E is the hard part.
- 10Open →
Consolidation settlement and differential movement
The slow half of the problem — and the half that actually cracks buildings.
- 11Open →
Rafts and mat foundations
One big foundation instead of many small ones — and why that is not automatically better.
Piles
- 12Open →
Why piles, and what kinds
The decision that comes before the calculation — and the one that costs most to get wrong.
- 13Open →
Load transfer: shaft and base
Two resistances, added in the equation and never mobilised together in the ground.
- 14Open →
Pile capacity in clay — the α-method
One coefficient, quoted between 0.3 and 1.0, multiplying the term that matters most.
- 15Open →
Pile capacity in sand — the β-method
Effective stress all the way down — until the measurements stop agreeing with it.
- 16Open →
Pile capacity from SPT and CPT; drilled shafts
Field data into pile capacity, and the part of a bored pile that no calculation controls.
- 17Open →
Pile groups, settlement and negative skin friction
Nine piles are not nine times one pile — in capacity, in settlement, or in what they carry.
- 18Open →
Laterally loaded piles
A cantilever into the ground — and the classification you must make before calculating anything.