Technical Papers
May 26, 2023

Improved Relationships for the Pile Base Response in Sandy Soils

Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 8

Abstract

Design codes vary in their recommendations for the end-bearing response for bored piles founded in sand, both for the ultimate design value and the response at small settlements. The ultimate end-bearing resistance may be expressed either in terms of bearing factors Nq relative to the in situ vertical effective stress, with the Nq value varying with the friction angle of the sand, or as a factor applied to in situ test data, such as the standard penetration test blow count or the tip resistance qc. Numerical studies have led to proposed ratios of design end-bearing pressure to qc at specific settlement ratios, such as 5% and 10% of the pile diameter. The work presented here used numerical analysis to evaluate the full pile base response from initial stiffness to ultimate end-bearing resistance at a settlement ratio of 10% of the pile diameter. The resulting base responses are suitable for implementation in beam column analyses and have been validated by comparison with published design guidelines and with data from a full-scale instrumented pile load test.

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Data Availability Statement

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the reviewers and the Associated Editor for the valuable comments and constructive feedback that improved this work.

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Published In

Go to Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 149Issue 8August 2023

History

Received: May 13, 2022
Accepted: Mar 21, 2023
Published online: May 26, 2023
Published in print: Aug 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Oct 26, 2023

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Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Univ. of Thessaly, Pedion Areos, Volos 383 34, Greece (corresponding author). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2661-867X. Email: [email protected]
Mark F. Randolph [email protected]
Professor Emeritus, Centre of Offshore Foundation Systems, Univ. of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy., Crawly, Perth WA 6009, Australia. Email: [email protected]

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