Pile Load Testing and Determining Bearing Capacity of Cast in Situ Pile: A Case Study
Piles are designed to transfer the load of superstructure to the deeper harder soil strata crossing the upper weaker strata of soil. Cast in situ piles are usually designed by many analyses and using many empirical formulas. But due to a great degree of prevailing uncertainties of subsoil behavior, variation of strata in the same site, diversity in the procedure of construction applied at site, piles are needed to be tested to double or so of design load to verify the conformity with that design load obtained by static design calculation. A case study of load test on a pile of 600mm diameter length of 35.250m was conducted through ASTM D 1143 81 method. The test load data were collected and converted into graphical forms. The results were interpreted through load settlement curves applying various methods for determining the allowable load bearing capacity of the pile.