Laboratory Evaluation of Effective Parameters on Uplift Force Under Reamed Pile in Expansive Soil

Abstract

Expansive soils are usually classified as problematic soils. These soils have a tendency to absorb water and expand causing damages to light weight structures and buildings. To control these changes in volume, different measures have been proposed. Under reamed pile is considered as good foundation techniques to mitigate swelling result from the expansive soils. The effort of this study is to estimate uplift movement response of under reamed pile in this soil. The influence of various parameters like length of under reamed pile (L), number of bulbs and extended length of under reamed pile in sandy soil are investigated. Many findings are obtained from this work that showed ability of under reamed pile in mitigating the uplift movement of expansive soil. There are three dominated independent variables of uplift movement of under reamed pile; number of bulbs, slenderness ratio (L/D) ratio and extended length in sandy soil. The uplift movement is lessened to (93%) when (under reamed pile of single bulb) embedded in expansive soil layer and extended to sandy soil at (L/H = 1.46) and decreased by about (96%) when (under reamed pile of double bulbs) embedded in expansive soil and extended to sandy soil at (L/H = 1.5).