The vertical motion of foundations and pontoons

This text collects the papers 'Vertical Vibration of Rigid Bodies on Deep Elastic Strata' and 'A Stoneley-Gibson-Varga Elastic Stratum' that have been published in the journal Heron (Volume 46, no. 1 (2001)).

The first chapter offers a survey of the vertical motion of rigid bodies resting on deep elastic strata. Four strata are distinguished:

deep water,
the homogeneous isotropic elastic half-space,
the water saturated homogeneous isotropic porous elastic half-space and
the Gibson half-space.
Four types of footings are considered: the strip, the circular disk and the embedded semi-cylinder and hemi-sphere.

In particular attention has been given to the distinction between compressible and incompressible strata, and to the distinction between low and high frequency factors of the oscillatory motion.

The second chapter provides a geometrically non-linear generalization of the Gibson soil. Some remarkable solutions concerning excavations and indented rigid punches are presented.

The results provide a first approximation of the behaviour of foundations on real soils in the case of small soil strains.

URL: http://www.vssd.nl/hlf/f016.htm