Field Study of Downdrag and Dragload of Bored Piles in Consolidating Ground
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 30, Issue 3
Abstract
This paper reports a field study on the downdrag and dragload of two pairs of bored piles installed in consolidating ground in the Zhejiang coastal area, China. During and after the construction of a 2.5-m-high embankment, the dragload and downdrag induced on the four piles, surface and subsurface soil settlement, pore water pressure, and lateral earth pressure were monitored. The field measurements show that the maximum dragloads in piles founded on relatively stiffer (end-bearing pile) and relatively softer layers (floating pile) ranged from 1,198 to 1,238 kN and from 798 to 870 kN, respectively. This suggests that the dragload in a floating pile can be one-third less than that in an end-bearing pile with similar geometries and embedded in the same consolidating ground. Deduced values above the neutral plane (NP) in the clay strata ranged from 0.28 to 0.3, respectively. A much smaller (0.04–0.06) was found below the NP. The existing analytical solutions overestimated the depth of the NP, leaving the structural design of the piles on the safe side.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Research Grants Council of the HKSAR (General Research Fund Project No. 617511), International S&T Cooperation Program of China (Grant No. 2015DFE72830), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 51408540), Distinguished Young Scholars of China (Grant No. 51325901), State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (Grant No. 51338009) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Project No. 2013M540494).
References
Acar, Y. B., Avent, R., and Taha, M. R. (1994). “Downdrag on friction piles: A case history.” Proc., Settlement ‘94: Vertical and Horizontal Deformations of Foundations and Embankment, ASCE, New York, 986–999.
Asaoka, A. (1978). “Observational procedure of settlement prediction.” Soils Found., 18(4), 87–101.
Burland, J. B. (1973). “Shaft friction of piles in clay—A simple fundamental approach.” Ground Eng., 6(3), 30–42.
Cao, Z., and Wang, Y. (2014). “Bayesian model comparison and characterization of undrained shear strength.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 04014018.
Davisson, M. T. (1993). “Negative skin friction in piles and design decisions.” Proc., 3rd Int. Conf. on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering, St. Louis, MO, 1793–1801.
Fellenius, B. H. (1999). “Piling terminology.” 〈http://www.geoforum.com/info/pileinfo/terminology.asp〉 (Jun. 8, 2010).
Fellenius, B. H. (2002). “Determining the resistance distribution in piles. Part 1: Notes on shift of no-load reading and residual load.” Geotech. News Mag., 20(2), 35–38.
Indraratna, B., Balasubramaniam, A. S., Phamvan, P., and Wong, Y. K. (1992). “Development of negative skin friction on driven piles in soft Bangkok clay.” Can. Geotech. J., 29(3), 393–404.
Inoue, Y. (1979). “Behaviour of negative skin friction on steel pipe pile driven in alluvial deposits.” Proc., Conf. on Recent Development in the Design and Construction of Piles, Institution of Civil Engineers, London, 237–244.
Inoue, Y., Tamaoki, K., and Ogai, T. (1977). “Settlement of building due to pile downdrag.” Proc., 9th Int. Conf. on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Tokyo, 561–564.
Jaky, J. (1944). “The coefficient of earth pressure at rest.” J. Soc. Hungarian Architects Eng., 1, 355–358.
Johannessen, I. J., and Bjerrum, L. (1965). “Measurement of the compression of a steel pile to rock due to settlement of the surrounding clay.” Proc., 6th Int. Conf. on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Montreal, 261–264.
Kog, Y. C. (1987). “A case study of downdrag and axial load on timber piles in layered soil.” Proc., 5th Int. Geotechnical Seminar, 269–276.
Lambe, T. W., Garlanger, J. E., and Leifer, S. A. (1974). “Prediction and field evaluation of downdrag forces on a single pile.”, Dept. of Civil Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Lee, C. J., Bolton, M. D., and AL-Tabbaa, A. (2002a). “Numerical modelling of group effects on the distribution of dragloads in pile foundations.” Géotechnique, 52(5), 325–335.
Lee, C. J., and Chen, C. Z. (2002b). “Negative skin friction on grouped piles.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, 679–684.
Lee, P. K. K., and Lumb, P. (1982). “Field measurement of negative skin friction on steel piles tube piles in Hong Kong.” Proc., 7th Southeast Asian Geotechnical Conf., Hong Kong, 363–374.
Leung, C. F., Radhakrishnan, R., and Tan, S. A. (1991). “Performance of precast driven piles in marine clay.” J. Geotech. Eng., 637–657.
Li, D. Q., Qi, X. H., Zhou, C. B., and Phoon, K. K. (2014). “Effect of spatially variable shear strength parameters with linearly increasing mean trend on reliability of infinite slopes.” Struct. Saf., 49, 45–55.
Little, J. A. (1994). “Downdrag on piles: Review and recent experimentation.” Proc., Settlement ‘94: Vertical and Horizontal Deformations of Foundations and Embankment, ASCE, Reston, VA, 1805–1826.
Matyas, E. L., and Santamarina, J. C. (1994). “Negative skin friction and the neutral plane.” Can. Geotech. J., 31(4), 591–597.
McCabe, B. A., and Lehane, B. M. (2006). “The behaviour of axially loaded pile groups driven in clayey silt.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 401–410.
Ng, C. W. W., Chan, S. H., and Lam, S. Y. (2005). “Keynote paper: Centrifuge and numerical modeling of shielding effects on piles in consolidating soil.” Recent Developments of Geotechnical Engineering in Soft Ground, Proc., 2nd China-Japan Geotechnical Symp., Tokyo, 7–19.
Ng, C. W. W., Hong, Y., Liu, G. B., and Liu, T. (2012). “Ground deformations and soil-structure interaction of a multi-propped excavation in Shanghai soft clays.” Géotechnique, 62(10), 907–921.
Ng, C. W. W., Poulos, H. G., Chan, V. S. H., Lam, S. S. Y., and Chan, G. C. Y. (2008). “Effects of tip location and shielding on piles in consolidating ground.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng., 1245–1260.
O’Neill, M. W., and Reese, L. C. (1999). “Drilled shafts: Construction procedures and design procedures and design methods.”, U.S. Dept. of Transportation Federal Highway Administration Office of Implementation, McLean, VA.
Shen, S. L., Chai, J. C., Hong, Z. S., and Cai, F. X. (2005). “Analysis of field performance of embankments on soft clay deposit with and without PVD-improvement.” Geotext. Geomembr., 23(6), 463–485.
Wang, L. Z., Dan, H. B., and Li, L. L. (2012). “Modelling strain-rate dependent behavior of K0-consolidated soft clays.” J. Eng. Mech., 738–748.
Yuen, K. K. S., and Lam, T. S. K. (1993). “Test piles and preload embankment at bridge 13 Yuen Long–Tuen Mun Eastern Corridor.” Geotechnical Engineering Office, Civil Engineering Dept., Hong Kong.
Zeevaert, L. (1959). “Reduction of point-bearing capacity of piles because of negative friction.” Proc., 1st Pan-American Conf. on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, Mexico City, 1145–1152.
Zeevaert, L. (1973). Foundation engineering for difficult subsoil conditions, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 353–373.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 30 • Issue 3 • June 2016
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 4, 2014
Accepted: Apr 27, 2015
Published online: Jul 2, 2015
Discussion open until: Dec 2, 2015
Published in print: Jun 1, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.