Hello, how can we neglect the soil springs between the shallow foundation and the soil beneath it in case where the foundation is sitting on piles and the design requires that all loads are transferred exclusively to the piles? If it's by defining a dummy soil the plate's interface element, what properties should it have? Can it be done by making the plate element few millimeters above the soil, hence they become contactless?
Thank you for your valued help.
Hello mohammad..
Hope to se you here
as Berk Demir mentioned, a few millimeter gap would give you meshing issue.
You can let the plate in contact with the soil. When you create the interface, change its propertie in the model tree from "from adjacenet soil" to another soil type (i.e. Mohr-Coulomb) with interface options with very low stiffness parameters (kn and kt). In this case the soil would be considered contactless with the plate