Full-Scale Load Test on Bored Cast in situ Piles—A Case Study

Abstract

This paper presents a case study on two full-scale pile load tests on the bored cast in situ piles of 800 mm diameter having 10 m length. These piles are intended to be used as foundations for a 20-storeyed residential building in Mumbai. For determining the allowable load carrying capacity of piles, it was decided to carry out initial load tests and gain insight on the behaviour of piles. Further, to verify conformity with the design load obtained from static calculations. A novel method of loading the piles has been used and introduced, as conventional static pile load testing methods require enormous temporary infrastructure for applying larger loads. In this method, a reaction system has been used that derives reaction from the rock anchors using a hydraulic jack to impose the 2–2.5 times the design load on test piles. In this paper, the reaction method was described along with the design of rock anchors. This paper presents a method to predict a safe load from the pile load test data for adopting in the design.