EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE OF 2 PILES USING PRESSUREMETER METHOD

This paper describes the results of two full-scale pile tests, carefully instrumented by means of removable extensometers (one board and postgrouted pile and one simply bored pile, both 31.7 m long and approximately 0.70 m in diameter). The site, located at the Evripos Channel, Greece, involves difficult and heterogeneous soil and rock conditions. The results compare favorably with the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees/SETRA recommendations for determining the bearing capacity of piles from Menard pressuremeter test (PMT) data. The settlements of the piles are also estimated, by means of PMT data (pressuremeter modulus), using a load-transfer (t-s) analysis. In particular, an efficient numerical solution, used in the program PIVER is presented. Thus, the pressuremeter method enables a complete pile design in difficult soil and rock conditions.