High rise buildings and dams have a wide base. Why??
Answers
Answer:
They apply a huge force on the ground.So to decrease the pressure and prevent them from sinking their base is wide.
Answer:
1.For buildings, it gives stability as well as to distribute the load over wider area and thus reducing the per square foot load. This has other desirable consequence, the wider base means that the steel requirements could be decreased and spacing of the steel as well as the diameter of the bars are all changed to more manageable. Where the wide bases are not possible, the design invariably have to accommodate the load over smaller bases and hence they have to go far deeper to suitable bedrock or have to drive the piles that much longer or more of them.
2.In dams, the wider bases are required to counteract the hydrological forces which can topple the dam if the bases are not wide enough.
So there are both technological and economical reasons to adopt wider bases.