Geo

D-Foundations

CPT based foundation engineering

In the 1930s, Deltares started the development of the Cone Penetration Test (CPT). In twenty years time this has evolved into the electrical cone, for which several national and international patents were granted. CPT testing is the standard soil test in The Netherlands, as it is accurate, fast and cost efficient. Since then it is impossible to imagine soil investigations in soft soil countries without the “Dutch Cone” test.

CPT tests measure cone resistance, as well as skin friction along the friction sleeve near the cone. These properties are ideal for the design of piled foundations, where both pile base resistance and pile shaft resistance are important.

Based on CPT test results, calculation techniques and design codes have been developed for the design of piled foundations in The Netherlands and Belgium. Since 1990, Deltares has been involved in the development of foundation design software. This has resulted in design and verification software for bearing piles, tension piles and shallow foundations. Previous releases of D-Foundations were called MFoundation.

General

D-Foundations follows the Eurocode 7 and the Dutch and Belgium National Annexes. First D-Foundations is used to create and optimize a design. In this process, automatic optimization options assist the user to efficiently create and fine-tune a design. Once the design is finished D-Foundations can perform a design code check resulting in a detailed report for the given situation. The ability to overrule and redefine various design code parameters allows D-Foundations to be used by engineers for specialized calculations using user defined foundation types and factors. Some specific features in D-Foundations are:

Soil data definition
D-Foundations requires input data from Cone Penetration Tests (CPT). Importing CPT data is possible in several formats, including the Geotechnical Exchange Format (GEF) and the format used by the Database Ondergrond Vlaanderen (DOV). Besides using GEF-files, CPT’s can be imported directly from the Dutch DINO database by TNO. The automatic CPT interpretation tool provides soil-type dependent proposals, including design code based parameter proposals.
Preliminary design of piles
D-Foundations provides simultaneous results of bearing capacity and required length for different pile types and different soil conditions.
Pile group interaction
In calculations, the effect of pile group interaction on settlement is included as well as on bearing capacity for the selected pile type and pile plan.
Design of shallow foundations
Foundation dimensions can be optimized. In addition, the required width for strip foundations and the capacity and stability of shallow foundations can be checked.
Code-based verification
A complete verification report can be generated in Dutch and English.
Standard parameters
All standard parameters provided by Eurocode 7 (such as soil parameters and pile type parameters) are incorporated within D-Foundations for easy and fast selection.

Bearing capacity versus depth for several pile types and CPT’s

D-Foundations comes as a standard module (Bearing piles), which can be extended further with other modules to fit other applications:

DGS 11.00 D-Foundations Standard module (Bearing piles EC7-NL)
DGS 11.02 Shallow Foundations module (EC7-NL)
DGS 11.03 Tension Piles module (EC7-NL)
DGS 11.05 Bearing Piles module (EC7-B)
DGS 11.09 Feasibility module (included in Standard module).

Interaction with other Deltares systems tools

D-Foundations requires the input of digitized CPT’s which are now widely available. In some situations CPT’s only exist on paper. The GEFPlotTool by Deltares is available for digitizing of electric and mechanical CPT’s and to convert them to the Geotechnical Exchange Format (GEF) standard. For a full 3D analysis of piles and pile groups including pile interaction under vertical as well as horizontal loading, Deltares systems provides the D-Pile Group program. D-Pile Group follows the American Petroleum Institute (API) standard. Please refer to the D-Pile Group page for additional information.

Support

Deltares systems tools are supported by Deltares. A group of 70 people in software development ensures continuous research and development. Support is provided by the developers and if necessary by the appropriate Deltares experts. These experts can provide consultancy backup as well.

On-line software (Citrix)