shear

When the forces are high enough to shear through soil particles, we call it a bearing failure.

Just like the simple block on the plane, the shear strength of soil depends on the internal forces too.

Even if the subsurface doesn’t full-on shear, it can still settle.

But they also can result in shear and tension forces between the baseplate and foundation, so you’ve got to have something in place to resist those forces too.

And they can fail in a lot of different ways under tension or shear forces.

There are three fundamental types of stress: compression , tension (pulling apart), and shear .