Horizontal Displacement Control in Course of Lateral Loading of a Pile in a Slope

Abstract

Standard procedures concerning axial and lateral capacity testing of foundation piles usually consist of a single loading cycle. Constant load steps or constant settlement increments may be applied in the test. Such a procedure significantly differs from in-situ conditions of pile loading, which can be cyclic – especially in the case of the constructions, which are subject to wind load. Several tests were performed to observe the behaviour of the driven piles subject to fast cyclic loading in horizontal direction (lateral load). The manner in which the load tests were performed made it possible to determine the displacement of the 40×40 cm pile in the least favourable loading scheme, i.e. the lateral load capacity of the pile oriented towards the embankment slope. The piles were originally designed for the foundation of noise barriers along the highway. Some of the piles were broken in course of driving and a cautious check of their behaviour under load was requested before the assembling of the entire structure. Eight load tests were carried out altogether. While selecting the piles for further load tests, the representativeness of the random sample was taken into account. The piles with diverse cross section and length were chosen, on the basis of the previous low strain tests of their integrity. The subsoil around the piles consisted of medium and coarse sands with the density index I_D>0.67. The pile heads were free. The points of support of the reference frame to which the sensors were fastened were located at the distance of 0.6 m from the side surface of the pile loaded laterally. In order to assure the independence of measurement, additional control (verifying) geodetic survey of the displacements of the piles subject to the load tests was carried out. The research conducted at Wroclaw University of Technology made it possible to collect and summarize the results of displacement measurements in course of static load testing of driven piles in a slope. Only selected case studies of cyclic loading in horizontal (lateral) pile load tests are presented in the paper.