Field capacity of steel pile with corrugated web surface

Abstract

A series of loading test on steel piles with web of different corrugation profiles has been carried out to study the performance of piles with trapezoid web in resisting loadings. Hypothetically, the inclined part of the corrugated web can provide an extra skin friction capacity of the pile. In the full scale tests, maintained load and constant rate of penetration tests were carried out. Six piles of different web corrugations were used in the test, all of which had the dimension of 200 x 80 mm and 5.0 m length. Maintained load test and constant rate penetration test on all the pile types had been carried out. The force versus settlement was plotted, designated as the resistance behaviour of the steel pile section against the vertical load. Comparison had been made to present the differences of the skin friction resistance capacities between both types of piles. The pattern of the settlement and end bearing capacity of the pile were also analyzed. The test results indicate that the total bearing capacities of pile with trapezoid web are higher than that of the flat web section of the same cross section area. The bearing capacities of piles with full corrugations are in the range of30 kN while the piles with flat web are only 20 kN. The study shown the trapezoid-section pile can be used as a better alternative to the conventional-section pile in term of the load bearing capacity.