4:00 PM (2.0 PDH)
Residential Foundation Design and Causes of Failures with Failure Examples
Presented by Mr. John M. Clark, MS, P.E. with Clark Engineers, Inc.
BIO: John M. Clark is the principal and owner of John Milton Clark Engineers Inc., and is a licensed professional engineer in Texas, New York, and Arizona. He holds a Master of Science in civil engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1976, with emphasis in advanced structural engineering and design, and foundations engineering; and a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Central State University in Edmond, OK in 1972, with minors in mechanical engineering and mathematics.
Mr. Clark worked for three years in the pre-stressed concrete manufacturing industry as a quality control inspector and engineer. He next spent about one year with an A & E firm in Oklahoma City, working on foundation designs and interstate highway bridge design, and about three years in the petrochemical design field at Bechtel in Houston, working as a structural design engineer. He spent 12 years with Owens Corning Fiberglas’ Non-corrosive Products Division in its Product Development Group in Conroe, TX, working in the areas of fiberglass tanks and buried FRP tanks, and pipe.
Mr. Clark formed Clark Engineers in 1989 and has subsequently consulted on a broad range of structural areas. These range from general civil and structural engineering to specific forensic failure investigations of foundations and buried tanks, to specialized stress analysis, testing, and product design of manufactured structural products, encased buckling analysis of buried structures, composite sandwich structures, and mechanical engineering for manufacturing plants.
ABSTRACT: This presentation provides a basic review of aspects of residential foundation design, and then we review a number of foundation failures and the lessons learned for each case. The design includes types of foundations, soil properties such as cohesive or cohesionless soils, PI, and PVR. Foundation details include layout grade beam depth, and soil treatment. Redundancy of design is emphasized throughout the presentation.
The failure reviews include inadequate grade beam depth with excessive tilt, the effect of large trees with high PI soil, the effect of silty sand with shallow grade beams, heave due to lack of site preparation, and heave due to tree removal. Time permitting, we will review a retaining wall placing surcharge on a bulkhead, and possible global stability failure due to inadequate pier depth.
