Assignment 2 Due: 07 Oct.

2010
CE 503 10 Points

A heavy rectangular tank with plan dimensions of L=4 m and B =5m exerts a load of 100 kPa on
the soil mass (Figure 1). Write a computer code to determine the vertical stress under at a point
P, located at a depth of 5m under the corner of the tank.

Steps for writing the computer code:

1) Divide the area (L x B) into smaller areas (say 10, 20, 30 parts) and for each area, use
Boussinesq’s equation for point load to calculate the vertical stress at point P
2) Sum the stresses from these smaller areas to arrive at the total vertical stress at P
3) Notice the convergence of the vertical stress at P for 10, 20, 30 parts to that of the actual
value of vertical stress calculated from elastic theory:

where,

Figure 1. Rectangular tank