Asrat, Worku (PhD)Tofik, Seid2019-11-302023-11-112019-11-302023-11-112019http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/20297Plate on elastic foundation establishes an adequate idealization in the analysis of shallow foundations, which includes isolated footings, combined footings, mat foundations, and flexible pavement. The important issue in the analysis is modeling the contact between the plate and the soil medium that is a soil-structure interaction (SSI) problem. The primary difficulty in the analysis of the soil–structure interaction lies in the determination of the contact pressure. The simplest subgrade model is the single parameter Winkler mechanical model, which represents the foundation soil by a series of independent springs. Winkler model is widely used and practiced in spite of its deficiency in representing the continuous behavior of real soils. Later, many advanced mechanical subgrade models have been proposed in order to improve on the inherent lack of shear interaction among the individual springs. However, these models still have their drawbacks in that they do not represent the subgrade shear interaction adequately. With the objective to improve on such drawbacks, a generalized continuum-based model has been recently proposed by Worku. This generalized subgrade model satisfies the fundamental elastic laws and all the boundary conditions since it is derived by considering all stress, strain and displacement components. The main objective of this work is to implement and calibrate the generalized continuum based subgrade model for the analysis of rectangular plates on an elastic foundation. The governing differential equation of a rectangular plate that incorporates Pasternak type subgrade model is formulated. Thus, an ordinary finite difference method is developed to solve the partial differential equations. Code based on MATLAB ® programming language is writ- ten for determining deflections and internal actions of the plate. Finite Element based software is used as a tool to determine an adjustment factor for the generalized model. Finally, the proposed method has been validated by comparing the results with other numerical models for selected loading conditions. The results of the comparison show that the generalized model shows an excellent agreement with the FE outputs and capable of predicting the behavior of the rectangular plates on elastic foundations.en-USElastic FoundationRigorous Subgrade ModelRectangular PlatesFinite Difference MethodThesis