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A simplified approach to account for through-soil interaction between two adjacent shallow foundations

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Abstract

Neighbouring buildings, even though disconnected from the structural viewpoint, may interact through the underlying soil especially when they are founded on very soft soils. Despite some pioneering studies since the early 1970’s, structure–soil–structure interaction has yet to be further investigated to reveal the effects that could be exerted on both the static and dynamic response of nearby structures. The present work aims at expanding the theoretical knowledge on this phenomenon through an extensive parametric study based on a truly 3D continuum approach solved through the Flac3D finite difference software. The impedance functions of two closely-spaced shallow foundations have been numerically calculated by varying the distance between the nearby footings and the subsoil configuration (homogeneous or layered). The numerical results have elucidated important effects of cross interaction between two neighbouring foundations. The static stiffness reduces, and this effect is increasingly significant as the foundations are closer whatever the subsoil conditions are. The dynamic coefficients increase with respect to those corresponding to the single footing over halfspace. Such effect is less important for the layer-over-halfspace soil configuration, for which the dynamic coefficients are mainly affected by the frequency response of the stratum. Finally, in the realm of the sub-structure approach, a novel simplified design approach, based on group factors for closely-spaced shallow foundations, was proposed to compute the soil-foundation impedance matrix englobing the foundation–foundation interaction in addition to the soil–foundation interaction.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The present study was developed within the framework of two research programs (ReLUIS-DPC 2019–2021 and 2022–2024) funded by the Italian Department of Civil Protection (DPC), as a contribution of the research unit University of Sannio (Sica) at the geotechnical Work Package 16, sub-Task 16.3 coordinated by prof. F. Silvestri, who is warmly acknowledged. The Authors also wish to sincerely thank the anonymous Referees for their helpful review that contributed to improving the quality of the work.

Funding

The source of funding that has supported this work is the Italian Civil Protection Department (DPC) within the 2022–2024 ReLUIS-DPC research program, as a contribution of the research unit of the University of Sannio(Sica) to the geotechnical Work Package 16, sub-Task 16.3. Author Stefania Sica has received research support from Reluis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Sannio, P.za Roma 21, 82100, Benevento, Italy

    Stefania Sica

  2. Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Napoli Federico II, Via Claudio, 21, 80125, Naples, Italy

    Filomena de Silva

Authors
  1. Enza Zeolla
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  2. Filomena de Silva
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  3. Stefania Sica
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by EZ. The first draft of the manuscript was written by EZ and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Stefania Sica.

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Zeolla, E., de Silva, F. & Sica, S. A simplified approach to account for through-soil interaction between two adjacent shallow foundations. Bull Earthquake Eng 21, 2503–2532 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-023-01621-1

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