A topic of long standing interest to both structural and geotechnical engineers is what is traditionally known as soil-structure interaction (SSI). For a long period, this has involved linear elastic interaction between the foundation and the underlying soil and the appropriate analysis is well developed for both static and dynamic interaction. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in considering nonlinear soil-foundation interaction in the design of shallow foundations, both for static and earthquake loading. To distinguish these approaches from the classical linear elastic soil-structure interaction, the term soil-foundation-structure-interaction (SFSI) has been coined recently. The development of various approaches is occurring rapidly in many research groups all over the world, with the inclusion of nonlinear structure and nonlinear soil interaction using FEM-based numerical methods, as well as the use of shallow foundation macro-elements as an alternative to using finite elements.

The workshop brought together representatives from several of these groups to review the current state of development, discuss the potential for application in foundation design, and consider how work in this area might develop in the next few years. The emphasis in the workshop was on application of these ideas to the foundation design process.

The book will be much of interest to post-graduates in Foundation Engineering, Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering, Earthquake Engineering, and Advanced Structural Dynamics.