How distribution characteristics of a soil property affect probabilistic foundation settlement — from the aspect of the first four statistical moments

Abstract

The effects of the first four statistical moments defining the statistical characteristic of elastic modulus on the probabilistic foundation settlement are investigated in this study. By combining the Hermite probability model and spectral representation method, a method to simulate nonGaussian homogenous fields based on the first four statistical moments is proposed. Linear elastic finite element models are employed to study the total settlement and the differential settlement of a shallow foundation. Probabilistic measurements of total–differential settlement obtained by the Monte Carlo simulations are presented. For the cases considered, the effects of skewness and kurtosis defining the probabilistic characteristic of elastic modulus on the total–differential settlement of a probabilistic foundation are illustrated. The computed results show that the value of skewness has a more significant effect on the probabilistic foundation settlement than kurtosis, and the case with the smallest skewness is observed as the most critical one.