Stability and load-displacement behaviour of axially cyclic loaded displacement piles in sands

Uncertainties regarding the axial cyclic behaviour of piles driven in sands led to an extended programme of calibration chamber instrumented pile experiments. Broad trends are identified and interpreted with reference to normalised cyclic loading parameters Qcyclic/QT, Qmean/QT and N. Cyclic damage is shown to be related to changes in the radial effective stress regime close to the shaft. While stable loading leads to little or no change as cycling continues in the sand masses’ effective stress regime, high-level cyclic loading can affect stresses far out into the sand mass. The test systems’ chamber-to-pile diameter ratio has a significant impact on outcomes. Piles installed in loose, fine, sand are far more susceptible to cyclic loading than in denser, coarser sand. Little or no change in pile stiffness was seen in tests that remained within the stable cyclic region, even over 10,000 or more cycles. Unstable tests lost their stiffness rapidly and metastable cases showed intermediate behaviours. The permanent deflections developed under cycling depend on the combined influence of Qcyclic/QT, Qmean/QT and N. While model tests provide many valuable insights into the behaviour of piles driven in sand, they are unable to capture some key features observed in the field

Behaviour of displacement piles in sand under cyclic axial loading

Field experiments have demonstrated that piles driven into sand can respond to axial cyclic loading in Stable, Unstable or Meta-Stable ways, depending on the combinations of mean and cyclic loads and the number of cycles. An understanding of the three styles of responses is provided by experiments involving a highly instrumented model displacement pile and an array of soil stress sensors installed in fine sand in a pressurised calibration chamber. The different patterns of effective stress developing on and around the shaft are reported, along with the results of static load tests that track the effects on shaft capacity. The interpretation links these observations to the sand's stress strain behaviour. The interface-shear characteristics, the kinematic yielding, the local densification, the growth of a fractured interface-shear zone and the restrained dilatancy at the pile soil interface are all found to be important. The model tests are shown to be compatible with the full-scale behaviour and to provide key information for improving the modelling and the design rules. (C) 2012 The Japanese Geotechnical Society. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Shell U.K.Shell U.K.UK Health and Safety ExecutiveUK Health and Safety ExecutiveUK Engineering Physcial Science Research CouncilUK Engineering Physcial Science Research CouncilTotal FranceTotal FranceCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)French Programme ANR SOLCYPFrench Programme ANR SOLCYPUK Royal SocietyUK Royal SocietyNatural Science Foundation of ChinaNatural Science Foundation of China [51011130162, 51178421

Prescribing habits in church-owned primary health care facilities in Dar-es-salaam and other Tanzanian coast regions

(East African Medical Journal 2001 78 (10): 510-514

Field experiments at three sites to investigate the effects of age on steel piles driven in sand

This paper investigates the influences that steel type, in-situ soil properties, water table depth, pile diameter, roughness and driving procedures have on the ageing behaviour of piles driven in sand. Tension tests have been performed on fifty-one, 48 to 60mm, outside diameter open-ended steel micro-piles driven at well-established research sites at Larvik in Norway, Dunkirk in France and Blessington in Ireland to better understand the processes that control axial capacity set-up trends in the field. Mild steel, stainless and galvanised steel micro-piles were driven and left to age undisturbed for periods of between 2 hours and 696 days before being subjected to first-time axial tension load tests. In addition to reporting and interpreting these experiments, further investigations of the sites’ geotechnical profiles are reported, including new piezocone and seismic cone penetration soundings as well as laboratory tests. Integration with earlier ageing studies at the same sites with larger (340 to 508mm outside diameter) open-ended steel piles driven to 7 to 20m embedment’s and experiments that varied the piles’ initial surface roughness shows that corrosion, pile-scale, roughness, the bonding of soil particles and the driving process can all be highly significant. New insights are gained into the mechanisms that control the axial capacity of piles driven in sand

Field experiments at three sites to investigate the effects of age on steel piles driven in sand

This paper investigates the influences that steel type, in situ soil properties, water table depth, pile diameter, roughness and driving procedures have on the ageing behaviour of piles driven in sand. Tension tests have been performed on 51 open-ended steel micro-piles, with 48 to 60 mm outside diameter, driven at well-established research sites at Larvik in Norway, Dunkirk in France and Blessington in Ireland to better understand the processes that control axial capacity set-up trends in the field. Mild steel, stainless and galvanised steel micro-piles were driven and left to age undisturbed for periods of between 2 h and 696 days before being subjected to first-time axial tension load tests. In addition to reporting and interpreting these experiments, further investigations of the sites’ geotechnical profiles are reported, including new piezocone and seismic cone penetration soundings as well as laboratory tests. Integration with earlier ageing studies at the same sites with larger (340 to 508 mm outside diameter) open-ended steel piles driven to 7 to 20 m embedments and experiments that varied the piles’ initial surface roughness shows that corrosion, pile scale, roughness, the bonding of soil particles and the driving process can all be highly significant. New insights are gained into the mechanisms that control the axial capacity of piles driven in sand

Field experiments at three sites to investigate the effects of age on steel piles driven in sand

This paper investigates the influences that steel type, in situ soil properties, water table depth, pile diameter, roughness and driving procedures have on the ageing behaviour of piles driven in sand. Tension tests have been performed on 51 open-ended steel micro-piles, with 48 to 60 mm outside diameter, driven at well-established research sites at Larvik in Norway, Dunkirk in France and Blessington in Ireland to better understand the processes that control axial capacity set-up trends in the field. Mild steel, stainless and galvanised steel micro-piles were driven and left to age undisturbed for periods of between 2 h and 696 days before being subjected to first-time axial tension load tests. In addition to reporting and interpreting these experiments, further investigations of the sites' geotechnical profiles are reported, including new piezocone and seismic cone penetration soundings as well as laboratory tests. Integration with earlier ageing studies at the same sites with larger (340 to 508 mm outside diameter) open-ended steel piles driven to 7 to 20 m embedments and experiments that varied the piles' initial surface roughness shows that corrosion, pile scale, roughness, the bonding of soil particles and the driving process can all be highly significant. New insights are gained into the mechanisms that control the axial capacity of piles driven in sand.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Geo-engineerin