EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON BEARING CAPACITY OF STEEL PIPE PILE WITH FOOT PROTECTION CONSTRUCTED BY THE IMPROVED JET-VIBRO PILE DRIVING METHOD

The hammer pile driving method is popular for installing steel pipe piles in port and harbor areas. It is getting harder to apply this method, because of noise and vibration problems. Therefore it is required to develop new pile driving method such as to perform high bearing capacity with low noise and low vibration when installing piles. In this method, a pile is penetrated into the ground using water jetting and vibration hammer, and a soil cement block is constructed around the pile tip with cement milk. With this method, noise and vibration are decreased when installing the pile and a high bearing capacity of the pile will result. First, model pile load experiments were conducted in the laboratory to confirm the axial resistance of the pile tip. Finally, installation and static loadirig tests were conducted to the full-scale piles installed into about 20 m depth. From these research works, the design method and the installation procedure of new method were proposed.