Designing Foundations for Vibrating Machinery: Dealing with Soil and Software Issues

The design of foundations for vibrating machinery involves solving the equations of motion. To do this, the basic values of load, mass, and impedance need to be determined. Soil / pile impedance is easily the most complex of these values. Current means of evaluating soil impedance is through the use of computer software. Because of the complexity of the calculations, such software is often seen as a "black box" that takes user input data and reports a result. Familiarity with the assumptions and formulas behind computer calculations is important, as is a visual grasp of how results will be affected by changes to input data. Also of significance is having the ability to confirm the reasonableness of computer results. This paper addresses these subjects.