Load Conversion for Continuous loads

[awa5114]

This is a basic question but for some reason it has me stumped. I am modeling a continuous load on a soil layer on a commercial FEA package. This is a plane strain problem where the layer is modelled 20m wide by 10m deep.

I am trying 2 variations with 0.2 m thickness and 1 m thickness. The load the software is applying is 1 kN/m/m for the 1m thickness variation. I would like to find an equivalent loading (i.e one which will give me equivalent stresses and strains throughout the layer) for the 0.2 m thickness case.

I am hesitating between using 0.2 kN/m/m and 5 kN/m/m. The reasoning behind these two numbers is either 1/0.2 = 5 or 1*0.2 = 0.2. Can anyone please explain what 1kN/m/m actually means? and how do we convert it for different thicknesses?

 

[thaidavid40]

I am not familiar with your problem, but just looking at the units of the parameters, and if the relationship is linear, then I'd vote for the 0.2 kN/M/M.
Dave

Thaidavid