Soil structure interaction in a combined pile

raft foundation

 By Narayan Muduli
Contents

 Introduction
 Soil structure interaction effect
 Different types of pile foundation
 Loading details
 Establishment of CPRF system
 Numerical modelling of in site soil and foundation
components
 Field test and validation of Plaxis 3D model
 Results from different loading condition
 Conclusion
What is the difference between pile raft and
pile group
 A pile group is a set of piles that have a pile cap that
means that they act together to carry the load.
 A piled raft is a raft foundation that has piles to reduce the
amount of settlement.
 The raft foundation and the piles would be designed to act
together to ensure the required settlement is not exceeded
Soil structure interaction (SSI)
 The way structure interacts with soil is called soil structure
interaction
 Amount of load transferred through each foundation depends
upon location of foundation and the behaviour of soil in which
the support is
 Convention structural design methods neglect the SSI effects
 The effect of ssi is very important for heavy structure but for
light structure generally we ignore
 Software used Plaxis 3D and Midas civil
Loading details
 Raw material storage building
 Consists of 12 compartments(bay),with six compartments on
each side
 Dimension of bay- L=22.25m,B=10.75m,H=7m
 Raw materials unit weight =14 Kn/m3
 Dimension of raft L=81m,B=55.5m,T=0.3m
 Total dead load of the system 106772 KN
Sectional view of CPRF and raw material storage building
CPRF System for a single bay
 The load bearing capacity equation of CPRF

 PR, RP and PP are pile-to-raft, raft-to-pile and pile-to-pile

interaction factors
Contd.
 The pile-to-raft interaction (αpr) represents the reduction
in the ultimate contact pressure available compared to the
ultimate contact pressure of the unpiled raft due to the
interaction of the group piles.(0.28)

Bearing capacity of unpiled raft (16740 KN)

Contd.
 Design of pile foundation

The pile-to-pile interaction (αpp)

 Load sharing response

Results from the establishment of pile raft

 Total vertical load on single bay is 23930KN

 Calculated vertical load on raft 16740 KN
 After consideration of (αpr =0.28),load bearing capacity of raft
4687 KN.
 Load bearing capacity of single pile 544 KN
 The excess vertical load is carried by piles is 19243 KN
 Obtained value of CPRF = 0.80 ,which indicate that load shared
by raft is 20%
Numerical modelling of in site soil and foundation
components
 Plaxis 3D Finite element based geotechnical software is
used
 The sandy soil was modelled using a conventional Mohr-
Coulomb constitutive model.
 To avoid undesirable boundary effects the lateral
dimension of the soil model were set to be five times the
width of the raft
 In total 581 piles were modelled as embedded pile
elements in such a way that they could bear the load
through shaft resistance as well as by end bearing
Field test and validation of Plaxis 3D model

 A PHC driven pile 400mm dia,75mm thick, and 20m long is

used
 Using a test load of 1876kn, the pile settled a maximum of
9.53mm.
 A single fix headed pile is modelled and loading similar to filed
condition is applied
Load combination

Plaxis 3d results
Results from different loading condition
Settlement criteria
 The CPRF undergoes a maximum vertical settlement of
29.83mm under loading case number 3
 The permissible settlement of CPRF as reported is 30mm to
50mm
 A critical loading case is taken that is when all compartments
are full on one side.
 It is observed that portion of raft just below the raw material is
undergoing vertical settlement of 95mm and remaining portion
of raft undergoes uplift of 15mm which gives a total
differential settlement of 120mm
Mechanism of axial load distribution of piles
 From fig. The minimum vertical load becomes mobilised for
pile no. 293 which is near to the centre of the foundation.
 The load mobilisation along the pile length increases from 2m
to 12m .
 Reason for this behaviour is the pile position, where the pile is
not experiencing direct load.
 The maximum load observed in pile 326,which is located at the
edge of the foundation and decrease towards centre of the
foundation
 Reason for this is relative displacement between soil that
surrounds the edge pile and the piles are located in vicinity of
the foundation
Axial load distribution along pile length Settlement curve obtained for various
piles
 Structural CALCULATED ALLOWABLE
capacity VALUE VALUE

Maximum axial 1031KN 1200KN

compressive load (load case- 1) (ACI 543 R-12)

Maximum 40.79KN 508KN

tension

Maximum 81.24KN-M 81.68KN-M

bending moment (cracking
moment)

From the above table it can be concluded that the piles are
safe in terms of their structural capacity
Load bearing mechanism of CPRF in entire foundation
system

 The CPRF coefficient is obtained for all load cases, range

0.69-0.77,which indicates that the raft shares 23%to 31%
of vertical load in present loading scenario.
 The load shared by raft in single bay is 20%
conclusion

 Load shared by raft ranging from 23% to 31% ,which is

matched with similar literature on this area.
 The soil–pile–raft interaction factor is deciding the
number of piles that required.
 The mobilisation of axial load along the pile length is
dependent upon pile spacing and its location within the
foundation .
 The mobilisation of raft resistance is dependent upon the
settlement in the whole foundation unit.
References
Kumar A,Patil M and Choudhury D (2017) soil structure
interaction in a combined pile raft foundation (a case
study).journal of geotechnical engineering,ICE.