Physical Modeling and Analysis of Cast -In-Situ Reinforced Cement Concrete Piled Raft in Clayey Soil

The combined piled raft foundation (PRF) arrangement has been frequently used for various constructions across the globe such as high-rise buildings, railways and varies structures imposing heavy loads etc. This combined system plays an important role in minimizing the settlement and more importantly the differential settlement without compromising with safety of the structure. However, strategically located piles improve the overall structural performance of the system by minimizing settlement and improving its load carrying capacity. The load carrying capacity of either the pile or the raft is considered in traditional design methods. Number of research papers has revealed that this method is uneconomical. Such design method is correct when soil support below raft may vanish like in offshore structure. The present paper investigates the settlement behavior, structural interaction between pile, soil and the raft and load sharing ratio using series of in-house experiments. For this, tests were conducted on physically modelled reinforced concrete piles and raft embedded in compacted soil under steady static loads with different pile configurations viz., free standing pile, pile group, only raft, pile group without raft and piled raft foundation etc. The results of this analysis show that the pile raft foundation’s ultimate bearing capability is significantly higher than the sum of load bearing capacity of pile group without raft and load bearing capacity of individual raft. The innovative design method in which bearing capacity of raft and pile considered is compared with traditional design method where raft capacity is neglected. Then there is increase in load bearing capacity by 175% to 600%. This variation depends on size of raft and number of piles provide. Also the load sharing of between pile and raft dependents upon individual capacities and is self-compensating or self-healing.