Behaviour of friction piles in soft sensitive clays

Abstract

During the construction of heavy structures, such as bridges and overpasses, on soft clays on the north shore of the St. Lawrence Valley, a detailed load test program on friction piles was performed to establish the characteristics of the most suitable type of pile and to study its long-term behaviour. Three types of piles, timber, steel pipe with closed end, and precast concrete Herkules H-420 piles, were tested. Four timber piles driven in a group and submitted to a 712 kN load served to study the long-term settlement of a small group of piles. Three deep settlement gauges were installed in the centre of this group for measuring settlements in clay at various depths.This test program was completed by the instrumentation of two bridge piers in order to verify the behaviour of larger groups of piles.The paper presents the results of the test piles, the long-term behaviour (4 years) of the bridge pier foundations resting on friction piles in soft clay, and the interpretation of the results.This study shows that the pore pressures induced by pile driving are related to the pre-consolidation of the clay and that they are much larger for tapered piles. It is demonstrated that the effective stress analysis method proposed in 1976 by Meyerhof determines adequately the ultimate pile bearing capacity, but that the effect of the timber pile taper doubles the skin friction.The settlement analysis of pile groups shows that settlements are due to the reconsolidation of the clay and shear creep deformations in the clay close to the pile wall.