Experimental apparatus and instrumentation for a centrifuge study on soil plugging during pile installation in clay
Experimental apparatus and instrumentation for a centrifuge study on soil plugging during pile installation in clay
A study on soil plugging in open-ended piles in normally and over-consolidated clay was carried out to enhance the understanding of mechanisms governing the installation of pipe piles into cohesive soils via jacking, cycling and impact-driving. For this purpose, model piles of different diameters were instrumented with total stress sensors, fibre optics for pore pressure measurement and a time-of-flight laser distance sensor to determine the plug height. One major challenge of optical laser sensors in combination with clays involves the water table above ground level, which can lead to light reflections and erroneous measurements. To address this problem, a lightweight spacer was used to raise the sensor's reference point above the water table. With this configuration, plug heights were successfully recorded in tests performed at 50 g in 500 mm long model piles with inner diameters of 14 mm and larger. This paper presents the experimental apparatus and instrumentation, discusses challenges and solutions, describes settings of the laser distance sensor as well as its calibration procedure and provides exemplary results for jacked piles.
Philipp Wiesenthal; B. Bienen; Sascha Henke
11th International Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ICPMG2026)
Session 1: New facilities, new equipment, and measuring techniques
https://doi.org/10.53243/ICPMG2026-64