A raft foundation is essential a mat foundation.

The purpose of a mat foundation is when you a building built on a site with low soil bearing conditions or when a foundation. A raft foundation is use to distribute the buidling pressure over a large area so the soil can bear the stress. Think of it this way. If you had a building that has a site soil capacity of two thousand pounds per square foot and the building weight is 8 thousand pounds. What foundation would put less stress on the soil? a 500 square foot foundation or a 1000 square foot foundation. A 500 square foot will give you a stress of 16 pounds per square foot while the 1000 will give you 8 pounds per square foot. Less stress is imposed on the building with the large foundation. Also, the raft foundation sometimes have haunches that go below the slab portion to resist punching shear from column or large concentration loads or wide beams along edges and through the intermediate in the slab to resist bending forces due to expansive soils (clay soils) and bending forces imposed the structure above. I wanna design raft foundation.so tell me that in which condition it will be use & also suggest about design? Raft foundation is used where uniform distribution of the load has to be done. Usually raft foundation is used where the soil bearing capacity is low. Design is usually a rectangular in section where the thickness and width of raft foundation is calculated based on the load requirement. There will be reinforcements within the foundation to take the load and all these are calculated based on the load bearing requirement. You may say raft foundation is somewhat like a plinth beam but placed under the foundation in the soil. Raft foundation is opted for when the area covered by the footings is more than 50% of the total area. Because it is more economical to go for a raft foundation in such condition. The above condition will occur only when the loading is more and the soil bearing capacity of the soil is not adequate. Regarding designing, concept is some what similar to the design of a slab. For accurate design follow IS codes.