Laying the Groundwork for Your Building’s Foundation Design
Specifying which foundation type you will utilize for your building project depends on a lot of structural design considerations.
This can range from the bearing capacity of the soil, weight of the superstructure, soil type, groundwater table, frost depth, structural loads, environmental loads, site location, foundation material and all other factors which may affect how our civil engineers optimize your foundation design.
But first, you need to understand the working principle behind the foundation design, such as:
- Shallow foundations
Usually specified three meters below the ground, shallow foundations can range from raft or mat foundation, to different types of footing such as isolated, cantilever or combined.
Shallow foundations can be used for small to mid-scale residential or commercial construction. Technically, these can be disadvantageous for lightweight structures due to possibilities of settlement.
- Deep foundations
Take your foundation design to the next level with deep foundations. After shallow foundations, you can safely anchor your superstructure to a deep foundation system such as pier, caisson or pile driving.
Despite its higher construction costs compared to shallow foundations, deep foundations offer your near-shore areas or marine-based buildings an unmatched structural anchorage deep down the earth’s bedrock.
Knowing these foundation types can get you a headstart, but we are only scratching the surface here when it comes to the enormous complexity of foundation design. Leverage our in-depth civil engineering expertise as you build a strong baseline point for your infrastructure assets.
Testing Soil Samples for Geotechnical Investigations in Foundation Design
Conducting a comprehensive geotechnical investigation should be your first order of business when building a feasible foundation design.
Soil testing and analysis serve as your critical path item. Without soil sampling, you risk potential safety issues and structural hazards. Most building clients or first-time property owners would undermine soil sampling for cost-saving measures, but realizing later on that this could be very costly in terms of structural repairs and retrofitting down the line.
In worst-case scenarios, designing your foundation without considering soil investigations can even lead to building collapse, imposing liabilities on your part by endangering the lives of building occupants.
Our civil engineers show how you can take proactive measures for your foundation design through soil sampling methods, such as:
- Inspection
- Test pits
- Probing
- Boring
For starters, inspection and ocular assessment give you an overview of what site conditions you can expect along with the adjacent structures.
Afterwards, you can dig or excavate test pits for soil sample collection, and gain better data acquisition on the underlying soil through probing without damaging existing utilities. For a more detailed technical soil analysis, you can delve deeper by boring holes into the ground so you can get information on the soil and rock strata, engineering properties of soil, and groundwater location.
Geotechnical results may differ even from adjacent structures, since each soil climate can vary despite the same vicinity. At New York Engineers, we treat each building project with a unique-specific approach on foundation design.
Driving Piles Underground For Deep Foundation Design
We have already established the need for deep foundations on sites that are located closely to water sources, since these can definitely affect your soil stability in line with erosion. In much serious cases, unstable foundations can cause a structural impact on your building's superstructure.
This is why you need pile driving for your foundation design solutions. To set up the groundwork, here's what you need to know about driven piles:
- Natural or prefabricated driven piles should all conform to ASTM standards
- Driven piles can either be steel, concrete or composite in material
- Steel driven piles come in forms such as H-pile, open-end or closed-end pipe, shell or sheet piles
- Concrete driven piles can range in shapes inclusive of square, octagonal or cylinder
- Pile driving methods include impact driving, vibrating, pressing, hydraulic jacking and pressing
- Applications for pile driving comprises of retaining walls, sound wall barriers, cofferdams and anchorage structures aside from foundation design
Driven piles are cost-effective, flexible and can adapt to any soil situation for deep foundation design. Aside from wetlands, you can also deploy pile driving on earthquake-prone sites, ensuring seismic resistance through the large diameter of non-displacement H-steel pipes.
Another competitive advantage that you can yield from driven piles is its excellent shaft soil strength after installation. Simply, your driven piles gain more structural load capacity, leading to higher cost-effective options for you down the road in the form of fewer piles or shorter piles driven with lighter equipment.
Secure Structural Integrity with Reinforced Concrete Foundation Design
Combine the two, and you have high compression from concrete and tensile strength from steel. We stack up their intrinsic material specs, and here's what you need when building a reinforced concrete foundation design:
- Reinforced concrete footings perform equal load distribution from superstructure down to the ground, and types can range from isolated to cantilever or combined footings
- Improper excavation for footing trenches can decrease the density of the soil, resulting in less bearing capacity
- Soil replacement for trenches that are dug too deep expand as much as 50%, then cause settling once reconsolidated under load
- International codes list different bearing capacities for each specific type of soil, where fine soils such as clays and silts have limited capacities than coarse soils
- Soil that is in direct contact underneath the footing takes the highest concentrated load and decreases consequently as it moves further away due to direct proportional relationship of distance and pressure
- Gravel or crushed stone delivers maximum shear resistance, subsurface water drainage and non-expansion from high moisture levels when utilized as a base for foundation design
Constructing Mat or Raft Foundation Design for Sturdy Wood Structures
Think of overlapping isolated footings and combine them together on a thick reinforced slab-on-grade setup: that's the basic premise of mat or raft foundation.
In a nutshell, this specific foundation design rests directly on a large area of soil and transfers structural loads from superstructure down to the ground.
Wood structure designs can be as lightweight as possible when compared to its industry counterparts, and as such, mat or raft foundation provides the necessary anchorage needed by the light-frame construction.
Our civil engineers clue you in on the site prerequisites for mat or raft foundation:
- Low-bearing capacity soil types
- Structural loads have to be distributed over a large area
- Individual or combined footings would cover 50% of the total ground area
- Basement construction
- Unpredictable soil strata with compressive soils
- Individual footings cause differential settlement
- Soil stress needs to be reduced
Why Construction Site Logistics Is Critical For An Efficient Foundation Design
Foundation design is the first in line in your building's critical path management. Any schedule delay on your foundation design will result in a domino effect, leading to inferior quality, cost overruns and late project delivery.
All these factors come into play for site logistics. Some logistical criteria you need to consider for foundation design:
- Early procurement of steel and concrete materials for reinforced concrete foundation
- Prefabrication of long-lead driven piles with site delivery and transport for quick assembly and installation
- Deployment of ample construction workforce on the preparation, formwork installation, rebar placement, and concrete pouring and curing with regards to reinforced concrete and raft foundation design
- Construction vehicles such as bulldozer, excavator and lorries for excavation and concrete pouring
- Equipment and tools for soil compaction and concrete consolidation
Any influx or scarcity on the materials and labor of your construction project can be mitigated through efficient visual scheduling and cost planning via 4D and 5D BIM. We balance out demand and supply on your foundation design for higher quality, cost and time savings.
Take Your Foundation Design to the Next Frontier with VDC
Integrating virtual design and construction upfront can help you visualize foundation designs in a 1:1 immersive scale through virtual reality headsets. This reduces clash detections and field rework which can't be otherwise seen in the limited imagery of 2D blueprints.
Enter laser scanning, capture reality and sensor-equipped construction sites through big data: our forward-thinking engineers utilize the most advanced technology in structural engineering to give you a cutting-edge advantage in your building's foundation design.
Build a Strong Foundation Design for Your Next Project with NY Engineers
New York Engineers is no stranger to the current waves of disruption hitting the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry.
We merge traditional foundation design methods with unparalleled digital tech to bridge the gap for your stronger building substructure.