Comparative Study of Interpreted Ultimate Loads of Piles from Pile Load Test Data Using Different Methods of Interpretation and Predicted Loads Using Soil Exploration Reports

Abstract

The construction of pile foundation is a sphere in civil engineering in which there may be at the design, Construction, installation and loading stage, a considerable no of factors on which limited data may be available. After even decades of use, inadequacies exist in practice of design, construction and testing of piles due to various complexities . A no of designing methods ,methods of assessing ultimate loads from load test data ,methods of soil investigation and methods of installation are being followed now a days. Due to various uncertainties it is a common practice to carry out pile load test to validate the pile capacity. There are various methods of testing of a pile and methods of interpretation of pile load test data which have been developed by different researchers. As interpretation of load test data plays an important role in analysis and design of piles, therefore it was felt necessary to carry out a comparative study of various methods of interpreting “Ultimate load” from pile load test data. The data base consist of 40 pile loading test results along with subsoil investigation reports. The analytical ultimate load carrying capacity of pile has been calculated using J F\eda method. and it has been compared with the interpreted ultimate capacity from pile load test data , using seven methods of interpretation .Each comparison has been statistically analyzed using Chavenet’s criterion and has been assessed on the bases of values of the Mean ,Standard deviation and Coefficient of variance(COV)