Contact interface fiber section element: shallow foundation modeling

With recent growing interests in the Performance-Based Seismic Design and Assessment Methodology, more realistic modeling of a structural system is deemed essential in analyzing, designing, and evaluating both newly constructed and existing buildings under seismic events. Consequently, a shallow foundation element becomes an essential constituent in the implementation of this seismic design and assessment methodology. In this paper, a contact interface fiber section element is presented for use in modeling soil-shallow foundation systems. The assumption of a rigid footing on a Winkler-based soil rests simply on the Euler-Bernoulli