Study on bearing capacity and influencing factors of bucket foundation for towering structures in soft soil areas

Abstract Bucket foundation is often used in towering structures. Bearing capacity of bucket foundation is one of the focuses in related fields. To investigate the bearing characteristics of bucket foundation in soft soil, a three-dimensional finite element model was established in this paper. This paper systematically investigates the bearing behavior of the foundation in soft soil under load components (horizontal and vertical moment) and analyzes the effect of main design parameters. The results show that the failure modes of bucket foundations are similar when subjected to horizontal loads alone. As the aspect ratio of the bucket foundation increases from 1 to 3, the horizontal and vertical bearing capacity factors increase by 72.12% to 58.29% and 9.59% to 6.10%, respectively.