Full Scale Instrumented Pile Load Test for the Port Mann Bridge, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

The Port Mann Bridge on Highway 1 in Metro Vancouver links the cities of Surrey and Coquitlam in British Columbia, Canada. A new 10-lane 2.02 km long cable-stayed bridge is being constructed over the Fraser River to replace the existing 5-lane bridge. Twelve of the twenty-five bridge piers will be supported on driven steel pipe piles. As part of the foundation design approach, a full-scale instrumented static pile load test was performed along with dynamic pile testing. The test and reaction piles consist of 75 m long, 1,830 mm diameter by 25 mm thick, open-ended steel pipe piles driven into glacially overridden soil using an APE D-180-42 diesel hammer. A custom-built static load frame and hydraulic jacking system provided incremental compressive loads up to 53 MN on the test pile. Following the compression test, an uplift test to 29 MN was performed. The pile was restruck with a Menck MHU 500T hydraulic hammer 9 days after the uplift test. Evaluation of the pile resistance distribution included impacts of residual load and pile plugging. Pile performance during the static load test indicated that approximately 36 MN was carried in side resistance and approximately 17 MN was provided in base resistance. The static pile load test and dynamic testing of selected production piles enabled the use of increased resistance factors for final design, thereby reducing the number of piles to 255, a reduction of approximately 30 percent.