Advanced laboratory testing in research and practice: the 2nd Bishop Lecture

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the special capabilities and practical value of advanced laboratory testing, focusing on its application in advancing the understanding and prediction of how driven piles function and perform in sand. Emphasis is placed on integrating laboratory research with analysis and field observations, drawing principally on work by the author, his colleagues and research group. The laboratory studies include highly instrumented static and cyclic stress-path triaxial experiments, hollow cylinder and ring-shear interface tests and micro-mechanical research. Soil element testing is combined with model studies in large laboratory calibration chambers, full-scale field investigations and numerical simulations to help advance fundamental methods for predicting pile behaviour that have important implications and applications, particularly in offshore engineering.