Novel toe driving for thin-walled piles and performance of fiberglass-reinforced polymer (FRP) pile segments

Despite the rapidly growing use of pile foundations, it is presently difficult to assure the integrity and uniformity of the cross-sectional area of cast-in-place piles when using normal concrete. Cavities and soil encroachments leading to soil pockets can jeopardize their load-bearing capacity. Moreover, corrosion in reinforced concrete and steel shell piles has been very costly, exceeding US$2 billion in annual repair costs in the United States alone. To address these two challenges, extensive research has been underway at the University of Western Ontario to develop novel technology for the construction of piles. Self-consolidating concrete (SCC), a material that flows under gravity and assures the integrity of piles, is cast into fiberglass-reinforced polymer (FRP) tubes that provide corrosion-resistant reinforcement. A toe driving technique was developed to install the empty FRP shells into the soil, and SCC is subsequently cast into the shells. Driving tests using this new technique were carried out on large-scale model FRP and steel pipe piles installed in dense dry sand enclosed in a pressure chamber. FRP-SCC and steel closed-end piles were also driven using conventional piling at the pile head. Static load tests were conducted on the various pile specimens under different vertical and horizontal confining pressures. The pile specimens were instrumented to investigate their dynamic behaviour under driving and their response to static compressive, uplift, and lateral loading. It is shown that the toe driving technique is very suitable for installing FRP piles in dense soils. Results from the driving tests and static load test indicate that FRP-SCC hybrid piles are a very competitive and attractive option for the deep foundations industry.