Design method of piled-raft foundations under vertical load considering interaction effects

The paper has proposed a design method considering interaction effects for a piled raft foundation. In this method, the raft is considered as a plate supported by a group of piles and soil. The ultimate load capacity of the pile group is taken into account in calculating the settlement when the foundation is subjected to a large vertical external load. In addition, this method supports estimation of the nonlinear behaviour of the piled raft foundation by considering the nonlinear behaviour of the piles. A step-by-step procedure to apply the proposed method to calculate the settlement and distribution of the bending moment of the piled raft foundation is introduced. To verify the reliability of the proposed method, models of a 16-pile raft and a 9-pile raft with different pile lengths embedded in homogeneous silica sand were tested in a centrifuge and comparisons were made between the results of the proposed method, the results of centrifuge tests, and those of Plaxis 3D. Good agreement between centrifuge modelling and the proposed method is demonstrated, thus showing the potential of the proposed method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.