Two other approaches for determining the settlement of heavily loaded foundations on rock are
the elastic method (i.e., Eq. 7.9) and the finite element method. Unfortunately, both of these meth-ods require that the modulus of elasticity Eand Poisson’s ratio mbe determined for the rock mass.
A major limitation of these two methods is that the value of Eis often obtained from an unconfined
compression test on a small rock specimen (i.e., ASTM D 3148-02, 2004, “Standard Test Method for
Elastic Moduli of Intact Rock Core Specimens in Uniaxial Compression.”). Using this approach will
undoubtedly overestimate the value of E, with the overestimation increasing as the RQD decreases.
The methods will have much greater accuracy if the value of Eis obtained from in situ tests on large
rock specimens (i.e., ASTM D 4555-01, 2004). For large scale in situ tests on rock, the value of Eis
obtained from the vertical stress versus vertical strain curve and is often defined as the tangent mod-ulus at 50 percent of the maximum strength and is then referred to as E
t
(see item a, Fig. 7.9).