Tribedi Apurba - Practical Foundation Design with STAAD Foundation Advanced

Apurba K. Tribedi

Anirban Datta

Exton, Pennsylvania, USA

Apurba Tribedi is a senior director at Bentley Systems Inc. He leads a highly skilled multinational team to create and market new software and services for the Telecom industry.

After graduating as a civil engineer, he joined Research Engineers as a software analyst and soon became the lead engineer programmer for the worlds leading structural analysis software, STAAD. For over 20 years, he has been managing, designing, architecting, and developing engineering software and services. He has traveled around the world to train and advance worlds infrastructure. His vision was instrumental behind the development of STAAD Foundation and STAAD Tower products.

He is an engineer, programmer, inventor, author, and philanthropist. Among his many inventions, he was recently awarded a U.S. patent for his work on soilstructure interaction and has also published several peer-reviewed journal papers and conference articles. Outside of his work at Bentley, Apurba is deeply involved in philanthropic work. He shares a passion for clean water and has installed water filtration systems at dozens of schools, improving quality of life for tens of thousands of students.

Anirban Dutta is a product engineer at Bentley Systems, Kolkata, India. He is associated with the STAAD Foundation product for almost a decade and contributed tremendously to the success of the STAAD Foundation product.

He graduated as a civil engineer in 2005 and then became a chartered engineer in 2010. Prior to joining Bentley Systems, he worked at many premium design companies, including Lahmeyer International, STUP Consultants, CADs Software, etc. At those companies, he contributed in many challenging projects ranging from bridges, industrial plants, to roads and multiplexes.

Besides being passionate about engineering, Anirban is an enthusiastic observer and writer of ancient Indian architecture and sculpture.

Practical Foundation Design with STAAD Foundation Advanced

First Edition

Copyright 2018 by Bentley Institute Press

Bentley Systems, Incorporated

685 Stockton Drive

Exton, Pennsylvania 19341

www.bentley.com/books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

STAAD is a registered trademark of Bentley Systems, Incorporated

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956199

ISBN: 978-1-934493-57-1 (epub)

Bentley Systems, Incorporated 685 Stockton Drive Exton, PA 19341, USA

As the world has climbed out of the Great Recession, industries and governments alike are heavily investing in infrastructure incorporating a more smart theme to better prepare their economies for the next generation of commerce. Sensors, real-time traffic information, Internet of Things, and 3D printing have woven themselves into engineering, construction and operations elevating a once operose and superannuated industry into one with great possibilities to improve efficiency. Although technology will play an important role in this transformation, processes must be updated to allow for more flexible workflows enabling disparate engineering disciplines like MEP, architectural, structural and geotechnical to be able to collaborate across the design chain ensuring data fidelity all the way down to the final owner/operator. With assets getting taller, larger, smarter and more global in nature, designers are pushing the envelope of what can be built and where.

Many of these new projects know very little about the existing conditions of the site they plan to build on. With the proliferation of drones, reality models can be generated through continuous surveying to understand existing site conditions including measuring excavation progress during the initial construction stages. However, as much as the engineering world has advanced their workflows through BIM and attempted to create a digital twin of the final asset, some disciplines like geotechnical have been left out of this new collaborative ecosystem. Soilstructure interaction is an imperative, symbiotic relationship between the geotechnical engineer and other disciplines like civil or structural. Understanding the options for the underlying footprint of the proposed asset can determine the ultimate rotation, the cost for cut and fill and the types of foundations to be used well in advance of the actual design. Conveying this information to the structural engineer or architect in the early stages of planning could save an enormous amount of time.

Apurbas book does an exceptional job in outlining the practical aspects of subsurface design as it relates to todays collaborative workflow environment. For example, the elusive subgrade modulus and its relationship to the bearing capacity is clearly explained from a pragmatic point of view. He clearly answers the difficult question as to what the structural engineer needs to properly model the structure that will ultimately rest on this foundation. We have all read engineering books riddled with formulas and proofs. Although these are necessary to learn the fundamentals of our disciplines, the practical applications are rarely explained. One of the key aspects of the book is to familiarize the readers about the practices and processes used in the industry which most textbooks do not offer. The first chapter introduces the fundamentals of foundation design which combines theory with practice. An example would be techniques to separate load combinations for the service check and strength design. Apurba has worked with several multinational EPCs (Engineering Procurement Construction firms) like JGC, Chiyoda, Jacobs, Uhde, L&T, Bechtel, and Reliance to glean how geotechnical engineers utilize software to not only solve complex subsurface problems but to collaborate with other disciplines. His experience working on global projects permeates throughout this book educating young and advanced engineers on foundation design.

Apurba does a thorough walkthrough of how a soil engineers need to convey the information they gather and analyze to other disciplines. Chapters on choosing the right type of foundation for different scenarios help readers truly understand the differences between laterally loaded piles, raft or mat foundations, isolated footings, and other shallow or deep foundations. In addition, Apurbas book educates the user on how to apply this knowledge to computer design applications. He uses a widely known software called STAAD.foundation to verify conclusions in his book and demonstrate how concepts like FEM can be utilized to provide more insight to other alternatives. The book explains the pitfalls of using software incorrectly as well as explaining how to model the physical world using digital components.