Numerical simulations of the reuse of piled raft foundations in clay

Abstract

The development and growth of urban environments in recent years is requiring geotechnical engineers to consider foundation reuse as a more sustainable solution to inner city redevelopment. Two main phenomena associated with foundation reuse have been reported in the literature, namely ‘preloading effects’ and ‘ageing effects’. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relative merits of these effects on the reusability of both piled and unpiled raft foundations in clay. Finite element analysis, in conjunction with an isotropic elasto-viscoplastic soil model, is employed for this purpose. The study is presented in two phases: (1) evaluation of preloading effects only by using a very low creep coefficient and (2) evaluation of combined preloading and creep effects. The variables considered in the parametric study include the number of piles, pile spacing, pile length, and soil type. Results show that both unpiled and piled rafts can exhibit significant capacity and stiffness increases upon reloading even for moderate levels of preload. Moreover, these increases are strongly dependent on the piled raft load sharing where unpiled raft and free-standing pile group capacity gains serve as upper and lower bounds, respectively, for that of a piled raft. This study underlines foundations reuse as an effective and sustainable solution for inner city redevelopment.