Shaft Capacity of Open-Ended Piles in Sand

Abstract

This paper presents the results from an experimental investigation designed to examine the effect of soil-core development and cyclic loading on the shaft resistance developed by open-ended piles in sand. An instrumented open-ended model pile was installed either by driving or jacking into an artificially-created loose sand deposit in Blessington, Ireland. The tests provided continuous measurements of the soil-core development and the radial effective stresses during installation and subsequent load tests. The equalized radial effective stresses developed at the pile-soil interface were seen to be dependent on the degree of soil displacement (plugging) experienced during installation, the distance from the pile toe, and the number of load cycles experienced by a soil element adjacent to the pile shaft. A new design method for estimating the shaft capacity of piles in sand is proposed and compared with measurements made on prototype field-scale piles.