Behavior of Cylinder Piles During Pile Installation: Fid-Bau Portal

Behavior of Cylinder Piles During Pile Installation

Rausche, Frank / Webster, Scott

Cylinder piles have a high axial compressive strength for high bearing capacities, they have a high moment of inertia and therefore can serve well as both a column and a foundation pile under high vertical and lateral loads. Cylinder piles often are used in nearshore applications where smaller foundation piles would require cofferdam construction and other costly measures. Drilled shafts have similar load bearing properties and capabilities, however, they are generally more costly than piles installed by impact driving. While impact driven cylinder piles are a cost effective foundation solution they can pose problems during installation. One problem that has received repeated attention is the potential for pile damage, a second one is an uncertainty, about the. end bearing capacity. During pile installation the end bearing may not be present due to high soil inertia effects, during a static load application it is more likely, though it is not guaranteed, that the soil plug transfers its full end bearing to the inside of the pile. Pile damage developing during the installation can occur at the pile top, along the pile both due to longitudinal and vertical cracking and near the pile bottom. Based on analyses and measurements, this paper examines the likelihood of pile damage developing during pile driving and discusses the end bearing problem.