Investigation of Cyclic Loading of Aged Piles in Sand

In recent years, there has been a significant push to develop optimized pile designs in the offshore industry, driven by growth of wind. One largest remaining uncertainties governing axial design sands is influence ageing effects and how an aged responds under cyclic loading. This paper presents results from long-term campaign field tests on loading sands, undertaken at Blessington geotechnical test site Ireland. Five open-ended steel piles were subjected total 33 static tension load over 3-year period. The planned coordinated order accurately quantify shaft capacity time. showed that gains occurred time as result ageing, line with presented other researchers. Piles remained stable levels much larger than their 1-day capacity. appears offer lower bound for degraded following failure. reduction caused failure was related pretest increase ageing. findings these addition reinterpretation previous testing indicated previously published interaction boundaries may be overly conservative.