There are three basic types of structural foundations: footings, mats, and piles. Footing foundations (Fig. 1) are sections of concrete that are shallowly embedded into the ground and sit underneath the lowest layer of the building. They are designed for fairly small loads, on the order of a few hundred tons, and are mainly used in residential construction . If the structure is much larger than a house, the foundation must be upgraded to a mat (Fig. 2). This is a shallow foundation that encompasses a large area and is usually made of a rebar skeleton that is filled with concrete. With a mat, the load is distributed over a greater area. Without it, a large, concentrated load will produce a significant amount of settling in the soil underneath, which could make the structure unsound and vulnerable to collapse .
In cake design, columns are, for the most part, the only structural support besides the cake itself. Columns are most obviously used when they separate tiers of a cake. But there are also interior cake columns that take the form of dowels . These dowels differ from the pile-like dowels previously mentioned because they are not directly transferring the load to the base and do not need to carry the weight of the entire cake.
One of the best examples of settlement is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Construction of the tower began in 1173 and it began leaning shortly thereafter. The lean has gotten significantly worse over the last eight centuries and currently leans at 3.8 degrees  (Fig. 4). The lean is caused by the uneven compaction of the soil beneath the tower. The cause for most building leans and ground settlement is an insufficient or weak foundation, which can occur either when the engineer overloads the foundation to the point that it cannot hold the weight of the structure, or the foundation is made unevenly and one side of the foundation is stronger than the other . Had the builders of the Tower of Pisa used a pile instead of a mat foundation, there would be very little force on the weaker soil and the lean would be all but eliminated .
Although you probably will not see a cake design course offered in the engineering department anytime soon, it is an interesting application of basic structural engineering concepts. Columns and foundations are just as important to the construction of cakes as they are to the construction of safe inhabitable buildings. Engineering principles can be found in the creation of almost any object. It is important to understand that engineering is more than just building bridges, circuits and engines, and that its concepts can be applied in new and interesting ways to bring to life the ideas of the imagination.
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