A Proposed Mechanics Reliability Coupling Method to Evaluate Soil-Foundation Vulnerability

The paper proposes a probabilistic framework in order to evaluate the vulnerability or structural failure probability of dwelling houses erected on clayey soils. As the foundations might suffer differential settlement, the behavior of the skeleton represented by continuous spread footings is analyzed. For this purpose, adequate mechanical models are developed: Euler-Bernoulli beams represent the continuous foundation and Winkler model represents the elastic ground behavior (elastic soil reactions). A finite element method is used for the mechanical analysis. It is associated to a probabilistic description of the randomness corresponding to the governing mechanical parameters. Monte Carlo simulations ate used to calculate the structural risk of failure for limit states functions corresponding to excessive displacements.