Design
Foundations are designed to have an adequate load capacity with limited settlement by a geotechnical engineer, and the footing itself may be designed structurally by a structural engineer.
The primary design concerns are settlement and bearing capacity. When considering settlement, total settlement and differential settlement is normally considered. Differential settlement is when one part of a foundation settles more than another part. This can cause problems to the structure the foundation is supporting. It is necessary that a foundation not be loaded beyond its bearing capacity or the foundation will "fail".
Read more about this topic: Foundation (engineering)
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)