Session report: shallow and deep foundations

Abstract

The session ‘Shallow and Deep Foundations’ of the 8th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics 2014 featured a large variety of foundations for onshore and offshore structures with an emphasis on single piles. With a total number of 37 papers, the session was the largest of the conference. In the scope of the session report, the papers are classified into different categories, namely ‘Foundation types and structures’, ‘Modelling techniques’ and ‘Load level and load type’.

Editorial

“…These include areas of general interest & similitude, scaling and education (Lee, 2015) & physical modelling studies of soil properties and behaviour (Sasanakul and Abdoun, 2015) and also ones themed around geotechnical engineering applications & shallow and deep foundations (Reul, 2015) & dams, embankments and slope stability (Bezuijen, 2015) & ground improvements, reinforcements and geohazards (Kitazume, 2015) & geotechnical earthquake engineering (Madabhushi, 2015) & offshore geotechnics (O'Loughlin, 2015) The former, general interest papers provide a broad overview, discussing recent developments in the modelling of challenging geomechanical problems, such as those involving dynamic soil behaviour or unsaturated soil. Contemporary geotechnical physical modelling generally involves conducting low volumes of increasingly complex tests to achieve ever-more realism in the geotechnical processes that can be modelled.…”

“…As outlined by Reul (2015), foundations papers focussed heavily on the application of physical modelling to reducing the uncertainties associated with deep foundation types (e.g. as outlined by Randolph (2003)) under various loading regimes.…”