A study of building foundations in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia is a developing country located in South-East Asia. The demands for buildings, for commercial or residential use, are high especially in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. A building is designed to support the load applied to it safely. The ability of a building to sustain the applied loads depends on the building's foundation system. Foundation is an important part of every building, which interfaces the superstructures to the adjacent soil or rock below it. The superstructure loads will be transferred to the underlying soil or rock. Without a proper design and construction of foundation, problems such as cracking, settlement of building may occur and even to the extent, the whole building may collapse within its design life. Therefore, a proper foundation system is required to maintain the safeness of a building. This research project can be separated into two main parts that are the project literature reviews and case studies. The literature reviews involve a comprehensive study on the soil available in Kuala Lumpur, the types of foundation system currently used, the factors governing the selection of a safe and economical foundation system, the design approaches adopted by the design engineers and lastly, the problems related to the foundation system. The second part of this project involves the discussion of five case studies conducted in the Kuala Lumpur area. These cases are about the development of medium and high rise buildings for commercial or residential purpose. The discussion comprises of the site conditions, selection of foundation system, the foundation system used and also some of the main issue in the cases. At a later stage, comparisons between these case studies are made. Conclusions are drawn from the literature reviews and case studies conducted.