Port silo foundations on piles under vertical cyclic stresses
Port silo foundations on piles under vertical cyclic stresses
A particular category of structures relating to port operations is represented by the metal silo buildings in which bulk goods, especially grain, are handled and stored. The proper foundation solution for silo bins in Constanta port (Romania) is based on concrete bored piles to undertake the high loads and transfer them to the soil. A particularity of the port infrastructure consists of weak soil layers regarding bearing capacity. This aspect, alongside the cyclical nature of the loading/unloading activity, leads to a different approach to determining the bearing capacity of a bored pile within the indirect foundation system of the steel silo bin. The highly demanding nature of the cyclic actions mentioned above (10-12 annual load-unload cycles), along with the over-unitary value of the ratio between the live and dead loads, promotes a complex approach regarding the bearing capacity of the piles. Moreover, the studies and calculations have indicated that the cumulative residual pile settlement (after in-situ analysis of several loading-unloading cycles) is a critical factor in considering the bearing capacity of the bored pile. Consequently, considering some technological constraints, the bearing capacity of a pile against vertical loads is approx. 20% lower for cyclic loads rather than static loads, which is essential when designing infrastructure solutions.
Petrisor Dogaru; Romeo Ciortan
18th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE2024)
A - New developments on structural design
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