Proposal for considering the group effect in the prediction of settlements in pile groups through load transfer methods

Abstract

When designing a foundation project, it is necessary to ensure that all the elements meet both ultimate and serviceability limit states, which call for predictions of settlement and load capacity. The load transfer methods are a widely used alternative to estimate the load-settlement ratio of piles in the design of foundation projects. However, traditional load transfer methods do not consider the interactive effects between the elements in pile groups. This study proposes changes to the load transfer curves developed by Bohn et al. (2016), aiming to incorporate the group effect in the analysis of load-settlement relationships in pile groups. Comparisons between the predicted settlements obtained using the proposed method and the results of load tests performed by Dai et al. (2012) in Jiangsu, China, showed that the modifications proposed in this study agreed well with the experimental results for most of the analyzed groups.