Horizontal bearing capacity factors for conical footings on clay

Many offshore foundations can be approximately treated as circular footings. There have been a number of studies in the past few decades on the vertical bearing capacity of circular foundations, however, limited work has been reported for buried footings under horizontal loading. This paper presents the results of a numerical investigation into the undrained bearing capacity of conical footings in clay for both uniform and linearly increasing shear strength profiles. In total 1296 three-dimensional finite element limit analyses were conducted to investigate the horizontal bearing capacity, considering the effects of embedment ratio, foundation-soil interface roughness, conical angle and soil strength heterogeneity. The effects of each of the above critical factors on the horizontal bearing capacity are presented and discussed. The bearing capacity factors in this study are summarized in design tables, providing new solutions to improve the current design practice for conical footings in clay soils.