Design and Improvement of foundation soil for high-rise construction

The assessments were made in the current practice based on the design foundation of high-rise buildings in Moscow to find a method for improving the soil foundation. Many references showed that the current design was controlled by structural engineers. They commonly used the old methods of analysis, the first part was carried out for the design of the structure and architecture of high-rise building, the second part of the study was to explore the benefit of adopting the application of stone columns raft foundation design concept. A comparative study was made between the results of the 3- imensional finite element (3D FEM) analysis in SCAD software. The results showed that the plate foundation of the building does not satisfy to carry the total load without some meaning of improvement. The 3D FEM by PLAXIS 3D showed that the used stone columns decreased the settlement because about 70-80% of the total building loads were carried by columns when the raft was placed in the stiff clay layer. The number of columns in the raft foundation can be significantly reduced, particularly if the soil had strong characteristics. The raft foundation settlement can be significantly reduced, particularly if the soil had strong characteristics.