Evaluation of Soil Coefficients for Two-Parameter Subgrade Soil Model Based on Rigid Plate Loading Tests

Two-parameter elastic foundation models have great potential for approximate soil-foundation-structure interaction analysis. A hurdle to the wide application of this model has been the difficulty of calibrating the two soil coefficients: the compression coefficient k and shear coefficient G. This paper presents a novel parameter calibration method for k and G based on a number of rigid plate loading tests. Empirical k and G values are also recommended. Experiments showed the validity of the proposed method. Two case studies verified the significance of the two-parameter model in the prediction of footing settlement when interactions among neighboring footings exist.