ESTIMATION OF LOAD-SETTLEMENT BEHAVIOR OF PILE GROUPS

Abstract

Broadly piles transfer axial loads either substantially by skin friction along its shaft or substantially by end bearing. Piles are used where either of the above load transfer mechanism is possible depending on the subsoil stratification at a particular site. The design of an axially loaded pile foundation is usually governed by the settlement consideration rather than the ultimate load capacity. Settlements under working loads as well as safe loads on the piles can be estimated from field load tests on piles. However load tests on groups of piles are expensive n o pile groups is presently estimated from the empirical methods which have little scientific basis. No simple analytical method is available in Literature that can directly estimate the load — settlement behavior of pile groups. The dissertation work presented herein attempts to address this issue. Two methods of analysis are proposed, one considering the block behavior of pile groups, and the other combining the single pile analysis using load transfer method (Coyle and Reese, 1966; Hazarika and Ramasamy, 2000) and Practical method (Shen et al., 2000) for pile groups. These methods have been computerized and are verified with the manually computed results for particular assumed field data. Finally the settlement estimates from the proposed methods..s are compared with that of conventional equivalent raft method.