Spread footing foundation for highway bridge applications

Shallow spread footings on soil are becoming an attractive choice for suppo rting highway bridge structures. However, to encourage their utilization, w ell-documented, comprehensive case histories must be established and made a ccessible to practicing bridge and geotechnical engineers. In addition, per formance prediction methods for spread footing foundations must be verified further using carefully compiled field data. This paper is the writers' at tempt toward achieving these goals, presenting details of a recently comple ted research project on 30 bridge spread footings in Ohio. The project data show that spread footings can be used successfully to support highway brid ge structures on both cohesionless and cohesive soils, provided that the su bsoil conditions are suitable and that the existing performance prediction methods are accurate.