Performances of Compressive Capacity for Belled Wedge Pile Group

Abstract

The belled wedge pile, which can improves the friction of pile shaft, tip resistance and reduce the influence of negative skin friction, is introduced. In this paper, the accuracy of FLAC3Dmodel is verified with field load test results. Subsequently, the numerical model was used to study the compressive behavior of belled wedge pile, conventional belled pile, wedge pile, and uniform section pile with the same concrete volume. Furthermore, the compressive behavior of belled wedge pile group was studied in terms of influencing factors such as pile spacing, stiffness of soil at the pile end, and diameter of enlarged pile head. The numerical results show that the compressive advantages of belled wedge pile can be developed adequately when the distributions of the friction of pile shaft and pile tip resistance are equilibrium, and it increases with increasing pile spacing, increasing stiffness of soil at the pile end, and increasing diameter of the enlarged pile head.