Capacité portante globale d'une fondation sur un sol non homogène

Calculations of the bearing capacity of a strip footing are performed within the frame of the plane limit equilibrium theory, taking into account the effects of weight, surface load, cohesion, and of a constant vertical gradient for the cohesion. By means of reduced co-ordinates it is shown that the results so obtained can be plotted very conveniently making it possible to refer to a single curve for the determination of the bearing capacity, when dealing with practical problems for 4° ≤ φ le 40º. It is pointed out that the effect of the cohesion gradient which is often unknown may be considerably under-estimated by the use of a linear formula for the bearing capacity, when dealing with a soil for which phi is small.