Piles socketed into rock are increasingly used to support loads from large-span bridges and heavy buildings. Peak side resistance is typically related to unconfined compressive strength, sidewall roughness and rock mass quality. This paper presents the results of tests on piles socketed in a weak, artificial rock made of sand, cement, gypsum powder and water. The test results are compared with methods of estimation in which the roughness of the pile-rock interface is modeled explicitly by assuming sinusoidal undulations along the interface. The testing program includes 10 model piles. Some of these piles have nonzero base resistance; others are unsupported at the base. The results indicate that both the degree of roughness of the socket sidewall and the base stiffness are of major importance to the load response of rock-socketed piles. The ultimate unit side resistance was observed to increase substantially with both increasing sidewall roughness and increasing base stiffness, but there is an upper limit to socket roughness beyond which very little increase in side resistance can be obtained. Most of the available correlations used to predict the ultimate side resistance of rocksocketed piles produced conservative estimates for the test piles in this study.
Shaft resistance generally dominates at the service loads of rock-socketed piles and therefore is always a topic of large research interest. This paper reviews the research progress that has been made in the last four decades in understanding the shear mechanism of the pile-rock interface and in calculating the shaft resistance. First, particular attention is given to notable previous studies of the shear mechanism and the method for calculating the shear strength at the pile-rock interface. Next, some commonly used design methods and many empirical correlations between the ultimate shaft resistance f su and the unconfined compressive strength r c of the intact rock are summarized, and the factors considered in these design methods (e.g., roughness, joints, discontinuities, smear, construction, and disturbance) are compared. Also, the factors that influence the shaft resistance of rock-socketed piles are summarized. Then, by evaluating briefly the existing theoretical methods, the limitations of elastic normal stiffness and the two-dimensional shear model are discussed. Finally, combined with a comparison between the elastic and elastoplastic solutions of the normal stress increment with the radial displacement increases and an analysis of paths of radial and tangential stress and possible crack formation of the bore wall during expansion, three modification methods using the elastoplastic solution to calculating the increment of normal stress are proposed to calculate shear strength at the pile-rock interface and some suggestions are also made for future research to optimize the calculation of shaft resistance.
The addition of chemical or mechanical materials, such as fibers or stabilizers, is frequently utilized in geotechnical engineering to improve the mechanical properties of problematic soils. In this study, great efforts have been made to obtain insight into the mechanical properties of the natural, fiber, and chemical additive-stabilized soil in heavy-haul railway embankment. A series of triaxial compression tests are conducted on the stabilized samples of different preparation conditions, including water content, compaction degree, confining pressure, fiber content, fiber length, stabilizer content, and curing time. Results show that the shear strength of natural soils shows a distinct increase after adding fiber and chemical additive stabilization. The optimum fiber content and length for fiber stabilization are 0.2% and 12 mm, respectively. The initial tangential modulus and failure stress of chemical stabilized samples increase with the increase of additive dosage or curing time. Meanwhile, a brittle characteristic is observed. In the process of determining the reinforcement methods in practical projects, several other considerations are included, such as equipment and time available, especially for stabilized soils. The fiber-reinforced soils and stabilized soils are efficient for increasing the shear strength and changing of the brittleness character of the heavy-haul railway embankment. The results of this study could provide a valuable reference for geotechnical engineers dealing with soil problems, especially for the heavy-haul railway embankment.
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