Pile Spacing Optimization of Short Piled Raft Foundation System for Obtaining Minimum Settlement on Peat

Abstract

Short Piled Raft is a modified piled raft foundation system, which represents combination between raft foundation and pile foundation, but the length of pile is relatively shorter. The basic concept of the Short Piled Raft foundation system considers the passive soil pressure creating a stiff condition of slab-pile system. This means that the thin concrete slab floats on the supporting soil, while the piles serve as stiffeners concrete slab and also to reduce settlement of the foundation. Slab to pile ratio of such system has been mentioned by several researchers, however the optimum pile spacing of stability performance for obtaining minimum settlement on peat haven't been clearly discussed. In this study, finite element method to simulate the stability performance related to settlement of Short Piled Raft foundation system was used. Short Piled Raft foundation system with concrete slab of 7.0 m x 7.0 m square was assumed to be built on peat with the thickness of 3.5 m. The material properties of pile and raft were constant. The outer diameter of galvanized steel pipe as pile was 0.30 m; raft thickness was considered to be constant of 0.15 m and the length of pile was 3.0 m, while the pile spacing varied from 0.50 to 3.00 m. Point load varied from 0 to 100 kN with increment of 20 kN was also considered as a static load, acted on the centre of the concrete slab. Optimization was done by comparing each numerical result of simulations, thus conclusion can easily be drawn. The optimum pile spacing was 1.00 m which produced minimum settlement of 30.11 mm under the load of 100 kN.