Evaluating the Soil Bearing Capacity Coefficients by Means of a Finite Element Program Based on Elasto - Plastic Mohr - Coulomb Behavior

A finite element program based on elastic –plastic model of Mohr-Coulomb criterion was used to evaluate the bearing capacity coefficients of soil under shallow strip flexible footing . The results were compared with others’ analytical results and it was found that the present study could offer quite consistent and rather precise values for the bearing capacity coefficients . The effect of different parameters such as E , υ, φ ,ψ ,γ , type of mesh idealization ,type of elements ,type of load distribution at the footing base have been examined and some new results obtained and discussed. The main conclusion can be summarized as : that the values of bearing capacity coefficients for any particular amount of friction angle should not be expressed as a single number solely dependent on the friction angle ,but the accurate values must be considered as the values dependent on some other effective parameters , which have been mentioned above . Keywords : soil bearing capacity , finite element , Mohr-Coulomb , shallow footing