Contact stresses for a footing on an orthotropic elastic medium

This paper deals with the contact stress analysis for a strip footing interacting with (i) a homogeneous orthotropic halfplane and (ii) multilayered orthotropic halfplane. The contact stresses have been obtained using a combined approach(finite element method-analytical)in which the stiffness matrix for the footing has been obtained using the finite element method(F.E.M) while for the different cases of orthotropic medium(halfplane) considered here, suitable analytical solutions have been used. The halfplane needs to be discretised only along the contact length. Hence the solution can be obtained with a minimum input data and also the solution scheme is computationally efficient. Results have been presented for the contact stress distribution, displacement profile and bending stress distribution in the footing.