Equivalent Head-Down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated From Bi-Directional Pile Load Tests
Equivalent Head-Down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated From Bi-Directional Pile Load Tests
Equivalent Head-Down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated From Bi-Directional Pile Load Tests
DOI 10.1007/s12205-012-1700-8
Geotechnical Engineering
www.springer.com/12205
Abstract
The increasing use of bi-directional (Osterberg cell) load tests in piles necessitates a reliable evaluation of the load-movement
relationship equivalent to the head-down load test. In this study, the existing evaluation methods were reviewed, and a new method
for evaluating the equivalent head-down curve was proposed. This method considers possible situations, such as non-measured axial
load distribution along the pile and the existence of residual load distribution. Three cases, in which bi-directional and head-down
load tests were performed at the same site, were analyzed in order to validate the proposed method. The results of the case studies
showed that the equivalent load-movement curves obtained either without assuming unit shaft resistance distribution or by
considering the effect of residual load agreed well with the measured curves obtained from the head-down test. Therefore, the
proposed method is recommended for practical use.
Keywords: deep foundation, foundation engineering, load test, pile, residual stress
1. Introduction
With the increase in the design load of piled foundations in
recent years, a common head-down load test is sometimes
insufficient to evaluate the bearing capacity of piles. Thus, the bidirectional (Osterberg cell) load test has been increasingly
applied in practice. In this test, a loading device, also known as
the O-cell, is installed at the pile toe. The toe resistance
provides the reaction force to mobilize the shaft resistance and
vice versa. The toe and shaft resistances can then be evaluated
separately, even without strain gauge measurements. The O-cell
test separates the toe and shaft resistances mobilizing them in
opposite directions, whereas the head-down test combines them
in the same direction. Piles for axial load are designed to function
similarly to a head-down test, and the design load is determined
after combining shaft and toe resistances, thus, a method to construct an equivalent head-down load-movement curve is needed.
Osterberg (1998) proposed a method of constructing the equivalent curve, based on an assumption of the pile being a rigid
body. An improved method was proposed by Loadtest (2001),
Kwon et al. (2005) and Lee and Park (2008), who all considered
a pile elastic compression. Unlike such simple approaches, Kim
and Mission (2011) and Xi et al. (2010) performed analysis using
load transfer function for shaft and toe resistances. However,
because their methods were developed based on an assumed unit
shaft resistance, or ignoring the effect of residual load, the appli-
*Member, Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Dong-A University, Busan 604-714, Korea (Corresponding Author, E-mail: sungryul@dau.
ac.kr)
**Member, Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Dong-A University, Busan 604-714, Korea (E-mail: [email protected])
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Equivalent Head-down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated from Bi-directional Pile Load Tests
The equivalent curve was obtained by adding to the corresponding movements in the curve obtained from Original method.
In this method, the magnitudes of head, toe, and d were calculated using Eqs. (2), (3), and (4), respectively. Various shapes
of the unit shaft resistance can be taken into account with the
centroid factor C.
QuL
head = ( 1 C ) -------EA
(2)
Qu L
toe = C --------EA
(3)
Qd L
d = --------EA
(4)
(1)
(5)
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Qu L
QuL
= -------- toe = -------- ( D2 D3 )
EA
EA
(Gregersen et al., 1973; Altae et al., 1993), and for bored piles in
sand (Baker et al., 1993). Likewise, Fellenius (2004) argued that
the residual load can be mobilized irrespective of the types of
piles and soils. Therefore, if the residual load is not considered,
the estimated resistance distribution may be different from the
actual (true) distribution. Although this error does not affect the
measured pile capacity, it may affect the designers interpretation
and subsequent use of the shaft resistance distribution.
The effect of the residual load on pile compression is shown in
Fig. 4. It is assumed that the residual load indicated by area EFG
in Fig. 4(a) exists in the pile prior to a load test. The area EFH in
Fig. 4(b) indicates the test resistance, which is mobilized by the
O-cell load, assuming zero pile strain. The true shaft resistance is
the sum of the residual load and the test resistance (Fig. 4c).
Because the pile compression that results from the residual
load has an identical effect on both the O-cell and the head-down
load test, head decreases and is then calculated using Eq. (8).
Qu L area EHI area EFG
-------------------------------------------------head = --------
EA
area EFHI
(6)
(8)
Fig. 3. Combined Shaft Load Distribution of the O-cell and Headdown Tests
(7)
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Equivalent Head-down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated from Bi-directional Pile Load Tests
rather than to the [(area EHI) - (area EFG)] in Fig. 4(c). This
may lead to a significant overestimation of the pile compression.
4. Case Studies
Three cases were analyzed, namely, two drilled shafts and a
driven concrete pile to verify the proposed construction method
of an equivalent curve. The third case involved the monitoring of
the residual load. In these cases, the equivalent curve using the
proposed method was compared with the measured curve
obtained from the head-down load tests, which were performed
at the same site.
4.1 Case 1: Drilled Shaft in Busan, Korea
The O-cell and head-down load tests were performed separately for two drilled shafts on the same site as shown in Fig. 5.
The pile diameter was 1.5 m, the penetration depth was 33.5 m,
and the pile toe was embedded about 5 m into the weathered
rock. The axial load distribution was measured using strain
gauge pairs at 12 levels. The load test was performed one month
after the concrete placement, the period of which would be
insufficient to mobilize the residual load. The detailed results are
described in the paper of Kwon et al. (2005).
Fig. 6 shows the load movement curve of the O-cell test. The
maximum applied load was about 19 MN, which induced a large
downward toe movement of 214 mm.
Pile compressions have a large influence on an equivalent
curve. Thus, the pile compression toe was evaluated using three
methods, after which the results were compared in Fig. 7. The
methods were as follows: (1) the conversion of strain into pile
compression using 12 levels of strain gauge measurements; (2)
LVDT measurement using the telltale reading; and, (3) theoretical
calculation assuming linear unit shaft resistance distribution. The
Strain gauge measurement curve increased proportionally with
the increase in applied load, whereas the LVDT measurement
curve increased rapidly about 3.6 mm at about 16 MN. This abrupt
increase in toe movement may have occurred due to measurement error, because pile damages were not detected from strain
gauge results. Therefore, the strain gauge measurement gave a
more reliable estimation of pile compression. In addition, the pile
compression of strain gauge measurement became identical with
that of the theoretical calculation at the final loading step. Thus,
the assumption of the linear increase of unit shaft resistance is
reasonable.
The equivalent load-movement curves obtained using the proposed method were compared with that of the head-down load
test (Fig. 8).
The curve, denoted as Unknown distribution, was obtained
assuming that the axial load distribution was unknown, and by
inputting the measured movements of D2 and D3 into Eq. (6) in
the evaluation of the pile compression head. The curve, denoted
as Known distribution, was obtained by applying the area ratio
of (area ACD)/(area ABCD) as 2/3 in Eq. (7), based on the linear
increase of unit shaft resistance confirmed in Fig. 7. Given with
C=1/3 in Eq. (2), the predicted curve from the Loadtest method
(2001) becomes identical with the Known distribution curve of
the proposed method.
In Fig. 8, the movements of the proposed method are a little
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Fig. 9. Schematic Drawing of Test Piles and Definition of Movement and Pile Compression
tively. The load test was performed 20 days after the concrete
placement, thus the effect of the residual load was insignificant.
The detailed description about the test is reported in the paper of
Lee and Park (2008).
The O-cell test was performed in two stages. In the first
stage, the bottom O-cell (36.9 m deep) was expanded, and the
toe resistance Qd was measured. In the second stage, the middle
O-cell (26.9 m deep) was expanded to measure the Lower Side
Shear (LSS) and the Upper Side Shear (USS) under zero toe
resistance by the toe opening of the bottom O-cell. Therefore,
the total resistance can be represented by the sum [Qd+LSS
+USS].
If the equivalent load of [Qd+LSS+USS] is applied on the pile
head, the following pile compressions would occur along the pile
(Fig. 9); (1) d-EB = the pile compression by Qd, (2) head-LSS = the
pile compression along lower side by LSS, (3) d-LSS = the pile
compression along the upper side by the reaction of LSS, and (4)
head-USS = the pile compression along the upper side by USS.
Each pile compression was evaluated by adopting Eqs. (4) and
(6) as follows:
Qd L
d EB = -------EA
(9)
( LSS )L
d LSS = -------------------1
EA
(10)
head-LSS = pile compression along lower side during 2nd step (11)
= (D4 D1)
( USS )L
head USS = --------------------1 ( D5 D3 )
EA
(12)
where the notations D1, D3, D4, and D5 are defined in Fig. 9
L1: Pile length of upper side
LSS: Shaft resistance along lower side at (LSS, D1) curve
of second step
Qd: Toe resistance at (Qd, D1) curve of the first step
USS: Shaft resistance along upper side at (USS, D3) curve
of second step
Figure 10 shows the measured load-movement curves of the
O-cell test. At the first stage, the maximum downward toe movement occurred at about 60 mm, which was enough to mobilize
the toe resistance. At the second stage, the middle O-cell expansion induced the upward movement of about 80 mm and the
downward movement of 10 mm. The LSS at the 10 mm movement did not reach the maximum value. The LSS was assumed
to be constant after the maximum test load.
Figure 11 shows the comparison between the equivalent curve
using the proposed method and the measured curve using the
head-down load test. The comparison showed that the equivalent
curve using the proposed method showed good agreement with
the measured curve.
This case study shows that the proposed method can properly
evaluate the equivalent head-down curve without assuming unit
shaft resistance distribution. Moreover, the proposed method can
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Equivalent Head-down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated from Bi-directional Pile Load Tests
Fig. 10. Multi-level O-cell Test Results: (a) Stage 1, (b) Stage 2 (Data
courtesy of Hyundai Engineering & Construction company)
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Fig. 15. Residual Load and Load Distribution at the Maximum Ocell Load
the residual load before the head-down test (area EFJ) was used
for this analysis.
Figure 16 shows the comparison between the equivalent curve
and the directly measured curve from the head-down test. The
equivalent curve, which considered the residual load, agreed
well with the measured curve, whereas the equivalent curve that
ignored the residual load significantly overestimated the pile
movement.
5. Conclusions
Fig. 14. Load-movement Curves Obtained from the Head-down
Test
A new method was proposed to construct the equivalent headdown load movement curve on the bi-directional load tests. The
proposed method was verified by comparing the equivalent
curve from the bi-directional load tests and the measured curve
from the head-down load tests. The following conclusions are
drawn from the study.
1. The proposed construction method evaluates the pile compression of the equivalent curves in two ways: (1) using the measured pile compression at a bi-directional load test without
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Equivalent Head-down Load vs. Movement Relationships Evaluated from Bi-directional Pile Load Tests
assuming the unit shaft resistance distribution, and (2) by considering the effect of residual load.
2. The residual load was negligible in the first and second case
studies, in which the load tests were performed within a month
after pile installation. A comparison between the equivalent
curve obtained using the proposed method and the measured
curve obtained from the head-down load tests showed that the
proposed method properly constructed the equivalent curve
using the measured compression in the O-cell tests, and that it
can be successfully applied to a multi level O-cell test.
3. In the case of a long PHC pile driven into the thick deposit, in
which a long term measurement of pile strains was performed,
the estimated equivalent load-movement curve obtained considering the effect of residual load agreed well with the measured curve from the head-down test.
Notations
The following symbols were used in this paper:
A: Sectional area of the pile
C: (distance to the centroid from the bottom of the unit
shaft resistance)/(overall length of unit shaft resistance)
D1: Downward pile toe movement at the O-cell tests
D2: Upward pile toe movement at the O-cell tests
D3: Upward pile head movement at the O-cell tests
E: Youngs modulus of pile
L: Pile penetration length
L1: Pile length of upper side
LSS: Shaft resistance along lower side below the O-cell
Qd: Downward load at pile toe which initiates toe resistance
Qu: Upward net load at pile toe which arouses shaft resistance
USS: Shaft resistance along upper side above the O-cell
: Coefficient, which was used to evaluate the pile compression by the Qu at the pile head in Kwon et al.s
method
: Additional pile compression by the different loading
direction between the O-cell and head-down tests
d: Pile compression induced by equivalent head-down
load of Qd
d-EB: Pile compression induced by Qd at the multi-level Ocell tests
d-LSS: Pile compression along upper side by the reaction of
LSS at the multi-level O-cell tests
head: Pile compression induced by equivalent head-down
load of Qu
head-LSS: Pile compression along lower side by LSS at the multilevel O-cell tests
head-USS: Pile compression along upper side by USS at the
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) NRL Program grant funded by the
Korea government (MEST) (No. R0A-2008-000-20076-0), and by
Basic Science Research Program through the National Research
Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology (No. 2009-0067319).
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