A comprehensive plate-sinkage equation is necessary for the description of the load bearing capacity of soils. In the last century, several improvements to the existing equations were attempted but with limited success. The main aim of this paper is to verify, evaluate and develop a load bearing capacity theory of finite half space soil. Agricultural soils may be regarded as a finite half space in which the tilled soil layer is comparable to the loading diameter. Harder soil is found below the tilled soil layer and this hard soil can be considered as a rigid layer. A new consideration is the compacted cone-shaped zone developing under a loading device and its possible interaction with the rigid bottom surface. Theoretical and experimental investigations reported in this paper have shown that these approaches have facilitated deriving new relationships valid for finite half space. These include two independent variables and developing a dimensionless load bearing number. This paper introduces a new dimensionless plate-sinkage equation describing soil deformation in a general form.

描述土壤的承载能力需要一个综合的板块沉降方程。上个世纪，人们尝试对现有方程式进行若干改进，但收效甚微。本文的主要目的是验证、评估和发展有限半空间土的承载能力理论。农业土壤可视为有限的半空间，其中耕作土层与载荷直径相当。较硬的土壤位于耕作的土壤层下方，这种坚硬的土壤可以被认为是刚性层。一个新的考虑是在加载装置下发展的压实锥形区域及其与刚性底面的可能相互作用。本文报告的理论和实验研究表明，这些方法有助于推导对有限半空间有效的新关系。这些包括两个自变量和开发无量纲承载数。本文介绍了一个新的无量纲板块沉降方程，以一般形式描述土壤变形。