Re-assessment of foundation settlements for the Burj Khalifa, Dubai

Abstract

This paper deals with the re-assessment of foundation settlements for the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai. The foundation system for the tower is a piled raft, founded on deep deposits of calcareous rocks. Two computer programs, Geotechnical Analysis of Raft with Piles (GARP) and Non-linear Analysis of Piled Rafts (NAPRA) have been used for the settlement analyses, and the paper outlines the procedure adopted to re-assess the foundation settlements based on a careful interpretation of load tests on trial piles in which the interaction effects of the pile test set-up are allowed for. The paper then examines the influence of a series of factors on the computed settlements. In order to obtain reasonable estimates of differential settlements within the system, it is found desirable to incorporate the effects of the superstructure stiffness which act to increase the stiffness of the overall foundation system. Values of average and differential settlements for the piled raft calculated with GARP and NAPRA were found to be in reasonable agreement with measured data on settlements taken near the end of construction of the tower.