A new insight into the effects of combined rupture mechanisms of soil and shallow foundations

A new hyper-elastic formulation is employed to improve the rate of convergence of Mohr-Coulomb-like constitutive models at small stresses. The implementation of this formulation in finite element codes allows to investigate the effects of combined rupture mechanisms in yielding shallow foundations resting on granular soils under different loading conditions, extending previous findings for undrained condition about the influence of plastic hinges on the limit load. It is shown that the bearing capacity can be strongly reduced by structural design, as compared to the case of non-yielding foundations.