"Thou shalt not overburden thy grounds"

In the beginnings of this blog I mentioned a need of rewriting some fundamental engineering principles, due to recent years' playing with - formerly natural- stochastic processes by some lucky ones with access to the proper science. The way of thinking is, that as far as we could have earlier counted on firm natural probabilities ( "rare things will not get more frequent in the future and will not happen within a lifetime") , now an engineer must think :"If anything wrong may happen, it will”.

Let's consider if designs that are inherently safe are possible at all.

It's therefore time to propose first rule,basic as a base.

Rule 1. "When supporting your designs , don't exceed ground pressure."

For mnemotechnics , the rule is simple , but requires some explanation. The idea is , that the construction should be isostatically supported, and able to float instead of breaking or falling in the unlikely case when the supporting ground loses stability or continuity ( vibrations,tectonics, landslides , etc).

In practice , it would mean that a 10-storey building 20mx20m base, weighing eg 6kT with foundation at 6 m depth in the ground of density 3T/m3 would need a foundation of ca 330 sq.m. horizontal surface. Presently , mostly slabs or piles are used calculated on standard ground hardness.

A spherical pressurized liquids tank diameter 20m would need a circular plate foundation of similiar diameter as the tank itself, if at the same depth as a/m.Presently only ring foundations are used.

A machine tool , weighing 12 T and put on the concrete plate should have metal base surface of ca 4 sqm in contact with the ground.

And , so on.

In majority of cases it is a bit more than today, but not much. The rule is not a revolution, but in several cases may save lives. Of course, other rules should remain in place (vibration damping, lateral strength, hardness, stiffnes,vertical balance, etc)

For very heavy objects , supported on one (or several) thin columns only option left is a sticker:”Not inherently safe"…