Contribution to piled raft foundation design

Raft foundations enhanced with deep foundation elements (typically piles), simply known as piled rafts, were examined to develop a more integrated, displacement-based, design methodology. Illustrative piled rafts were analyzed using simplified linear elastic and nonlinear plane strain finite element models. The effects of raft and pile group system geometries and pile group compression capacity were evaluated on the average and differential displacements, raft bending moments, and pile butt load ratio of the piled rafts. The results were synthesized into an updated, displacement-based, design methodology for piled rafts.