Ultimate bearing capacity of a foundation on the rock media due to the presence of a circular void: design tables, failure mechanism, and recommendations

This paper investigates the influence of a circular void on the ultimate bearing capacity ( UBC ) of a strip footing subjected to uniformly distributed load resting on the rock mass, using adaptive finite element limit analysis. To assist the practicing engineers in their work, a dimensionless reduction coefficient, R c , has been evaluated and presented in comprehensive design tables for various rock mass quality and geometric aspects of the void. Furthermore, the influence of the various rock mass properties and parameters of the generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion and the void’s position w.r.t the footing is evaluated and discussed thoroughly with the noted failure mechanism.