The objective of this course is to assist a licensed design professional, forensic structural engineers, consulting engineers or/and a licensed general contractor to deeply know, and understand what are the causes of foundation settlement regarding its effect on the whole building, how to avoid and the correction methods if found. Inevitably, soils deform under the load of foundation structures. The total vertical displacement that occur at foundation level is termed as settlement. The cause of foundation settlement is the reduction of volume air void ratio in the soil. Moreover, the magnitude of foundation settlement is controlled by many factors type of soil and foundation structure. Foundations on bedrock settle a negligible amount. In contrary, Foundations in other types of soil such as clay may settle much more. An example of this is Mexico City palace of fine arts has settled more than 15 feet (4.5m) into the clay soil on which it is founded since it was constructed in the early 1930s. However, building foundation settlement is normally limited to amounts measured in millimeter or fractions of an inch. Structures will suffer damages due to settlement of its foundation specifically when the settlement occur in quick manner. In this article, different types of foundation settlement along with their cases and expected effects on the structure will be discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• Types of the foundation settlement
• All signs in buildings that point out the foundation settlement occurrence
• How to prevent the foundation settlement?
• Allowable foundation settlement values
• Foundation failures due to settlement: Causes & Remedies measures
• Correction methods for foundation settlement