Experimental Study of Pile Installation and Cyclic Behaviour in Yellow River Silt

Abstract

The pile foundation is often affected by friction fatigue during pile installation and cyclic loading. In order to study the fatigue behavior of it, the installation and cyclic experiments were carried out using pile foundation model test device. The effects of cycle numbers, cumulative displacement on the pile load performance were studied in the experiments. The results show that the friction fatigue appears with different degrees on pile installation and cyclic process. During installation from soil surface, the soil plug increases and eventually remains constant, and the pile head load increases with the increase of penetration displacement, while the horizontal stress on pile shaft decreased with the increase of h/R because of lower relative displacement. In the cyclic load stage, pile head load and base resistance stresses decrease rapidly in the 5 cycles and gradually restore to 68% and 112% respectively, while the horizontal stress reduces to stable in cyclic load and the fatigue behavior is more significant with lower value of h/R due to the higher degree of soil particle breakage.