The bearing capacity of offshore foundations, subject to combinations of vertical, horizontal and moment loading, is generally defined through failure envelopes. These envelopes are commonly determined assuming a spatially homogeneous soil which is an unrealistic hypothesis. In this paper, probabilistic failure envelopes of strip foundations are determined taking into account the spatial variability of soil shear strength through a random finite element method (RFEM). The proposed approach combines finite element analysis, random field theory and Monte Carlo simulations. Through a strip foundation case-study, this paper shows the influence of soil spatial variation on ultimate capacities, failure mechanism and failure envelopes.
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