Analysis of the ultimate bearing capacity of a single pile in granular soils

The bearing capacity of a single pile in granular soil was analyzed piles under vertical loads in the study of the mechanism of shaft fiiction. The effect of the deformation modulus on the bearing capacity of the single pile in granular materials, and especially in sand, was examined. By using the FLAC program for the finite element analysis it was possible to predict quite accurately the load capacity and load deformation behavior of the pile, for both rigid and deformable piles. The specific results have shown that bearing capacity of the pile changes from 860 to 1025 tones while the field-loading test reached the point 900 tones. The influence of the load on development of stress and displacement fields around the pile was examined as well. A review of current theories for piles in granular soils, practical methods for calculating the bearing capacity and the numerical analysis presented in the paper enable a quick estimation of the bearing capacity of a single pile in granular soils. 1 Background. Current theories for piles in granular soils Various theoretical solutions have been proposed for the dimensional problem of the bearing capacity of a single pile such as that of Terzaghi in 1943 [28]. Berezantzev et al. [4] postulated in 1961 a failure mechanism for a driven pile in which the shear zones do not progress above base level. The theory of limit equilibrium in granular media that was proposed in 1952 by Berezantzev [3] solved the stress field. Meyerhof [l41 proposed in 1953 a formula for the bearing capacity of a pile in soil possessing both cohesion and friction for the Transactions on Engineering Sciences vol 32, © 2001 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3533