Recent advances in designing, monitoring, modeling and testing deep foundations in North America

Abstract

Based on the challenges in supporting structures on difficult ground conditions and advancement in various technologies, deep foundation engineering has seen rapid advances in designing, monitoring, modeling and testing in recent years. Full-scale tests coupled with innovative monitoring and numerical modeling has helped to better understand the behavior of deep foundations in difficult soils and rocks. Static and dynamic loading systems have been used to load relatively larger diameter single and group pile foundations and monitor the performances in various ground conditions. Construction and monitoring techniques have been improved to ensure the quality of augered cast-in-place piles. Osterberg load cell with better instrumentation have been used to understand the behavior of rock socketed drilled shafts in soft rocks. Tools are being developed to better characterize condition in the borehole of a drilled shaft using downhole penetrometer and laser based roughness profiler. Numerical methods are being used to model the behavior of single and group piles. There is increased interest in understanding the lateral behavior of piles under dynamic loading conditions. Nondestructive test methods are being used to investigate the integrity and bearing capacity of the piles. Load and Resistance Factor Design concept is used more and more in designing deep foundations.