The 2016-update of the Dutch Design Guideline for Basal Reinforced Piled Embankments

The Dutch Design Guideline CUR226 for basal reinforced piled embankments was revised before publishing its second edition in Dutch and English in 2016. This paper reports about the main changes in comparison to its first edition, of 2010. One of the main changes was adopting the Concentric Arches method of Van Eekelen et al. (2012b, 2013, 2015) and van Eekelen (2015) for the design of the geosynthetic reinforcement (GR). An accompanying set of partial safety factors was derived with an extensive probabilistic study. The Eurocode guidelines for traffic load were adopted and converted into a uniformly distributed design load for piled embankments using the Boussinesq spreading method. This resulted in a practical set of tables. Finally, a design guideline for the pile caps on top of the piles was added. Extensive calculation examples support the use of the new guideline.