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A grade beam or grade beam footing is a component of a building's foundation. It consists of a reinforced concrete beam that transmits the load from a bearing wall into spaced foundations such as
A grade beam or grade beam footing is a component of a building's foundation. It consists of a reinforced concrete beam that transmits the load from a bearing wall into spaced foundations such as pile cap
A pile cap is a thick concrete mat that rests on concrete or timber piles that have been driven into soft or unstable ground to provide a suitable stable foundation. It usually forms part of the deep foundation of a building, typically a multi-sto ...
s or caissons. It is used in conditions where the surface soil’s load-bearing capacity is less than the anticipated design load
In a general sense, the design load is the maximum amount of something a system is designed to handle or the maximum amount of something that the system can produce, which are very different meanings. For example, a crane with a design load of 20 ...
s.
A grade beam differs from a wall footing
A wall footing or strip footing is a continuous strip of concrete that serves to spread the weight of a load-bearing wall A load-bearing wall or bearing wall is a wall that is an active structural element of a building, which holds the weight of ...
because a grade beam is designed for bending and typically spans between pile caps or caissons, while a wall footing bears on soil and transmits the weight of the wall directly into the ground. It also differs from a strap beam because a grade beam is reinforced to distribute the weight of a wall to separate foundations, while a strap beam is designed to redistribute the weight of a column between footings.
Grade beams may also be used in conjunction with spread footing
A shallow foundation is a type of building Foundation (engineering), foundation that transfers structural load to the earth very near to the surface, rather than to a subsurface layer or a range of depths, as does a deep foundation. Customarily, a ...
s, in a case with large moments from lateral loads, in order to reduce the size of each spread footing.
See also
*Deep foundation
A deep foundation is a type of foundation that transfers building loads to the earth farther down from the surface than a shallow foundation does to a subsurface layer or a range of depths. A pile or piling is a vertical structural element ...
References
{{reflist Building engineering Architectural elements Deep foundations