Behavior of raft on settlement reducing piles: Experimental model study

An experimental program is conducted on model piled rafts in sand soil. The experimental program is aimed to investigate the behavior of raft on settlement reducing piles. The testing program includes tests on models of single pile, unpiled rafts and rafts on 1, 4, 9, or 16 piles. The model piles beneath the rafts are closed ended displacement piles installed by driving. Three lengths of piles are used in the experiments to represent slenderness ratio, L/D, of 20, 30 and 50, respectively. The dimensions of the model rafts are 30 cm × 30 cm with different thickness of 0.5 cm, 1.0 cm or 1.5 cm. The raft-soil stiffness ratios of the model rafts ranging from 0.39 to 10.56 cover flexible to very stiff rafts. The improvement in the ultimate bearing capacity is represented by the load improvement ratio, LIR, and the reductions in average settlement and differential settlement are represented by the settlement ratio, SR, and the differential settlement ratio, DSR, respectively. The effects of the number of settlement reducing piles, raft relative stiffness, and the slenderness ratio of piles on the load improvement ratio, settlement ratio and differential settlement ratio are presented and discussed. The results of the tests show the effectiveness of using piles as settlement reduction measure with the rafts. As the number of settlement reducing piles increases, the load improvement ratio increases and the differential settlement ratio decreases.