Building foundations

10/26/16

“How can we transfer the loads of buildings into the ground?”

Buildings are one of the omnipresent features of human civilization. Even though they come in all different shapes and sizes, they all have one thing in common, a foundation. A foundation is what transfers all of the loads of a building into the ground for support. There are three main types of modern day supports used in structural engineering: Shallow foundations which are typically simple shapes such as rectangles or circles that run around 1 meter in to the ground, deep foundations which transfer the load even further than shallow foundations (typically all the way to the more sturdy subsoil), and monopile foundations (typically used in offshore structures) which transfer the support load all the way down into the seabed.