Leaderboard

You can draw unit width slabs with uniform thickness. Keep doing it and keep reducing your slab thickness to model tapered footings. But I would not recommend that for such a problem. FEM is sensitive when thickness changes. So If you reall want to do as accurate as possible modelling (although FEM is still an approximation) you can use other softwares like STRAND7 or LUSAS or any other. In SAFE I would have modelled it with average thickness (or even less than that based on engineering judgement and specific conditions). You can always develop rationality on any problem with given constraints. Thats creativity you know!

The reason why foundations are tapered is because you need a certain depth to satisfy shear and moment at locations of distance d from support for shear and face of support for moment. Beyond these points your numbers are expected to be small and you should always verify BMD and SFD diagrams.There is no point in doing a tapered analysis. Thanks.

Assalam-o-alaikum! Dear colleagues! This forum is really a great platform for us, to share our knowledge and field experience with each other. Moreover, this forum can also help a lot in improving overall standard of technical know-how of our structural engineers, by providing them quality advice and guiding them to international standards of structural design and construction practices. IMO, this latter aspect is not only very important, but also our moral obligation as well as a national duty. But, this will be possible and practicable only, when more and more engineers join this forum, and contribute their knowledge and experience on regular basis. And, this is what this thread is meant for. However, we are probably missing an important aspect in our discussion, that can attract engineers to join and/or visit this forum more frequently. And, that is, replying to their queries early and more frequently. It is natural that a normal person is much more attracted to an early reply to his/her questions, rather than overall level of advice at a particular forum. On the other hand, no response to a query for a long time, will most probably disappoint the originator, resulting in lack of interest. What I am trying to emphasize is, that we (especially the moderators and senior/more experienced members) should NOT ONLY visit the forum regularly, BUT ALSO should reply the questions raised/queries made in various sections AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. (I myself always try to act on this principle, in cases where I can help.) IMHO, this policy will not only attract more engineers, but will (later on) also build their confidence in this forum, as a major source of structural engineering knowledge and advice. Regards.