One of the first things geotechnical engineers learn in foundation engineering is stress distribution under the footings and/or behind retaining walls. We have all learned about stress bulb going to 2B or 4B, etc. Novo Tech has just launched a new free educational software that helps you visualize the stress distribution and settlement for multiple footings, simulating overlap of the stress bulbs, ground surface settlement, and more.
Bubble 3D is a state-of-the-art freeware for visualizing foundation stress and settlement distribution! It comes with a complete help file (accessible from inside the program), and user's manual in PDF and eBook formats to allow you getting up-to-speed in a very short time.
Novo Tech designed Bubble 3D for assisting geotechnical engineers to exercise stress distributions specially when there are other surcharges / footings close to a footing. Instead of utilizing FEM or similar methods, it follows a simple philosophy: It discretizes the model into many 'soil elements', and calculates the stress increase due to all surcharges at each soil element, and presents the results graphically.
What Can You Do With Bubble 3D?
- View stress distribution under the footings (i.e. stress bulbs),
- Define a stress cut-off (e.g. 20%) for stress bulbs, in order to investigate stress influence zone,
- Investigate the overlap of stress bulbs for adjacent footings,
- Cut through the stress bulb at any location and in any angle,
- Visualize the settlement of the ground surface,
- Various type of footings are covered: pad, strip, circular, raft, ring, box, etc.
- View stress distribution for all soil elements in a tabular format,
- Export the results to image and Microsoft Excel formats
Bubble 3D covers the following stress and settlement analysis methods:
- Boussinesq (1885), Holtz and Kavocs (1981)
- Westergaard (1938)
- Newmark (1935)
- 2:1 Method
Additionally, Bubble 3D covers various methods for calculation of settlement at each soil element:
- Rigid (semi-infinite)
- Flexible (semi-infinite)
- Elasticity Theory
Note that Bubble 3D is not a sophisticated finite element or finite difference software. It is critical to understand the assumptions, weak points and limitations of this program by reading the Bubble 3D documentation first.
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