ABSTRACT
In geotechnical engineering education we face the problem of the computation of stresses and settlements in the half space under various types of loads. In 1885 Boussinesq advanced theoretical expressions to determine stresses at a point within an ideal mass. His equation considers a point load on the surface of a semi-infinite, homogeneous, isotropic, weightless, elastic half-space. To solve problems for the square or rectangular bases loaded with uniformly distributed load the Boussinesq’s equation has been integrated over a rectangle of dimensions B*L. For some other load shapes the equations for stress computation are given by many authors. The limitation of all these equations is that the point of interest must be below the corner of the base. To overcome these problems Boussinesq’s equation was reintegrated again over a general rectangle loaded with a nonuniform load. The integration was performed in fully symbolic form with the computer program Mathematica. The equation obtained allows the computation of stresses and further settlements in an arbitrary point of the half space. Once when formulas are coded in a chosen programming language such routine can be used as a black box to solve large variety of problems, such as point load (concentrated load), strip load of arbitrary width and rectangular load. This approach replaces the standard approach where the stresses are computed using either formulas or charts thus yielding more time to be spent for the engineering problem.
