PHYSICAL MODELLING OF PILED FOUNDATION UNDER COMBINED LOADING: INSIGHTS ON THE PILES-RAFT-SOIL COUPLING

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4. PHYSICAL MODELLING OF PILED FOUNDATION UNDER COMBINED LOADING: INSIGHTS ON THE PILES-RAFT-SOIL COUPLING

Many European infrastructures are reaching their design lifespan, requiring adjustments for accommodating new societal demands such as increased traffic loads. For the case of aging viaducts, it is crucial to reassess their piled foundations in accordance with current design standards, also accounting for seismic actions. Common design practice still relies on oversimplified assumptions, including disregarding the piles-raft-soil coupling. A recent numerical study carried out by the authors has proven that verifying piled foundations under generic actions at ultimate limit states could result in non-optimal design choices. These could ultimately lead to excessive consumption of raw materials during retrofitting, especially in cases where the length of the piles is similar to the major raft dimension.
This contribution presents an experimental campaign conducted at TU Delft geotechnical centrifuge, aimed at validating and completing the aforementioned numerical study. The campaign consists of a series of small-scale centrifuge tests carried out at an effective acceleration of 50g and 100g, on a prototype foundation model embedded in Geba sand. The foundation model consists of a raft rigidly connected to eight piles. The system is subjected to wide range of pseudo-static loading paths, as well as to a series of cyclic loading conducted at progressively increasing loading.

5th European Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ECPMG2024)

Geotechnical infrastructure