Pile‐Group Settlement Using Independent Shaft and Point Loads

Abstract

A method of predicting pile‐group settlements is presented herein for cases in which the piles are held together by means of a rigid cap. Piles in the group are assumed to be of the same material, length, and diameter. Settlement influence and interaction factors are obtained using a finite element code, modeling the pile as a hollow cylindrical insert in the interior of a homogeneous, linear, elastic, isotropic halfspace. These factors are tabulated and can be used with the results of individual, full‐scale, pile load tests to provide a very effective means of estimating pile‐group settlements. Shaft and point loads are treated independently when applying the method, thus allowing for simulation of implicitly variable shaft and point load ratios during loading. Uniform shaft load distributions are assumed, but other distributions can be considered as well. Few parameters are needed to apply the method, which therefore retains the simplicity of existing