A non-linear load transfer method for determining the settlement of piles under vertical loading

Abstract

A load transfer method for determining the settlement of single piles under vertical loading is presented. By allowing slippage at pile-soil boundary, their interaction is bounded by the interface resistance which results in more realistic settlement profile compared to those from non-slip models. By validating with static load tests of 25 bored piles in Bangkok, the differences between predicted and observed settlements at working load level ranged between 0.6 and 2.7 mm. The differences between estimated and measured axial load distributions, normalised by loads on the pile head, were between −5 and 15%. At high load level where the nonlinearity was more pronounced, the predictions still matched well with the observed responses with exceptions in few cases due to the uncertainty in parameter estimations and construction defects. The validation results suggested that the accuracy sufficient for practice can be attained by the proposed method and parameter estimation procedures.