Sustainable foundation solutions for industrial structures under earthquake conditions -theory to practice

Abstract

The choice of suitable foundation system below an industrial structure is primarily governed by underlying soil strata, liquefaction potential considering the intensity of an envisioned earthquake and the importance or service life of the structure itself. This paper presents five different case studies which particularly highlights the engineering judgement being adopted for proving sustainable foundation solution to various industrial structures. First four cases demonstrate the efficient use of combined pile-raft foundation as a suitable foundation choice. The proposal advocated the use of performance based design approach where the individual capacities of the foundation components were assessed and utilised leading to considerable cost saving. The numerical analysis using various computation techniques helped in understanding the pre-failure response of the soils supporting these foundations and obtaining the structure's performance. The last case study describes the cost-efficient innovative practice of foundation system in combination with ground improvement techniques for Petroleum-Oil-Lubricant (POL) terminal facilities that are proposed to be constructed in originally liquefiable soil at Motihari, India.