Bearing Capacities of Shallow Skirted Foundations After the Action of Multi-Directional Cyclic Displacements Considering Soil Degradation

Shallow skirted foundations have been applied widely in ocean engineering. Under the action of external excitation, the shallow skirted foundations on soft soil undergo cyclic displacements during service state. Under the action of cyclic displacements, the foundations drive the surrounding soft soil to produce a continuous accumulation of absolute plastic shear strain, which weakens the shear strength of the soft soil around the foundations. Therefore, the bearing capacities of shallow skirted foundations reduce after the action of cyclic displacements considering soil degradation. In order to study the evolutions of bearing capacities of shallow skirted foundations after the action of multi-directional cyclic displacements considering soil degradation, the elastoplastic finite element models of shallow skirted foundations with different embedment ratio are established. Cyclic displacements are applied along different displacement loading paths, and the evolutions of soil shear strength and bearing capacities of shallow skirted foundations after the action of cyclic displacements are analyzed. The results show that the soil softening zone gradually expands from the stress concentration zone of the soft soil to the surrounds with increasing number of loading cycles. Due to the enlargement and weakening of the soil softening zone, the failure envelopes of shallow skirted foundations gradually shrink, but the shrinkage trend gradually converges with increasing number of loading cycles. The shapes of the failure envelopes are relatively less affected by the cyclic number of displacements. The size of the failure envelopes is greatly affected by the loading paths while the shape of the failure envelopes is relatively less affected.