A boundary-type approach for the computation of vertical stresses in soil due to arbitrarily shaped foundations

Purpose: This paper aims to present a simple, yet accurate and efficient, formulation for computing the vertical soil stresses due to arbitrarily distributed surface pressures or loads over an arbitrarily shaped area. Design/methodology/approach: By leveraging on the strength of Green’s theorem, the present approach is based on the formulation of the classical Boussinesq solution as a boundary-type problem over an arbitrarily shaped simply- or multiply-connected loaded region. The accuracy of the developed formulation was exemplified through a number of illustrative examples, which included both simply- and multiply-connected loaded areas. Findings: The results of the test examples presented in this work indicated a high degree of accuracy and flexibility of the developed approach despite its simplicity. Originality/value: The main contribution of the present work is the introduction of an efficient meshless approach and an algorithm that can be implemented in few lines of code on any programing platform, as either a stand-alone program or a computational module in larger engineering software packages.