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Assessment of SPT-based methods of pile bearing capacity-Analysis of a
database
A.Bouafia
Department of civil engineering University of Blida, Blida, Algeria
A.Derbala
Sromek mechanical Foundations Dubai UAE
ABSTRACT: It is nowadays recognised the in-situ tests–based methods are the most appropriate to predict
pile foundations bearing capacity. In foundation design codes as well as in the literature are prescribed several
SPT-based design methods, most of them being empirical. The paper presents a database consisting of 46
axial pile loading tests carried out in 27 sites in the United Arab Emirates with comprehensive geotechnical
data. The piles are bored in slightly silty sandy soils. An evaluation of some currently used methods for the
calculation of pile bearing capacity in sandy soils on the basis of SPT test was made. Comparison of pre-
dicted values to the ones experimentally derived from pile tests has led to rank these approaches with respect
to their predictive capability for the bearing capacity of bored piles in sand.

1 INTRODUCTION with local geotechnical conditions in the U.A.E. The

The in-situ tests are nowadays widely used in geo-
technical projects to characterise soil materials. They
are faster and cheaper than those carried out in labo-
ratory and do not necessitate any sampling. Standard
Penetration Test (SPT) is appropriate to estimate the
resistance and density of sandy media and is largely
practised in the Arabian gulf region within the scope
of foundation projects. It should be however men-
tioned that the diversity of empirical interpretations
of SPT and the dependence of this latter on the test
procedure and the device features are source of un-
certainties and discrepancies between methods
aimed to evaluate bearing capacity and settlement
of foundations.
These uncertainties in geotechnical pile design,
notably within the scope of big sized projects, often
lead to carry out static pile loading tests in order to
experimentally determine pile bearing capacity and
settlements as well.
Although the SPT-based pile design literature is
wealthy one needs to be aware of local geotechnical
conditions from which several empirical formulas
were derived. Caution is then necessary when using
any SPT-based method.
Several studies on pile tests databases were un-
dertaken to empirically derive methods of pile de-
sign (Meyerhof 1956, Robert,1997) or to assess ex-
isting methods (Briaud and Tucker 1988,
Bustamante et Al 1991).
This paper is aimed to present the results of an
evaluation study of bored piles behaviour in relation
quality of prediction of ten commonly used design
methods is assessed through a database including 27
silty sandy sites and 46 static pile loading tests.
2 FEATURES OF THE DATABASE
2.1 Pile loading test
Piles studied are usually cast in-situ bored with ei-
ther casing method (for large diameter piles) or con-
tinuous flying auger method (for medium diameter
piles in stable soils). Slurry products like bentonite
are sometimes used for maintaining the borehole
of pile.
Piles subjected to axial loading test are usually
non-instrumented by strain gauges or sliding exten-
someters. They are simply connected at the top with
four dial gauges, with a usual sensitivity of 0.01 mm
for the settlement reading. The load is usually ap-
plied in increments by a hydraulic jack and pump as-
sembly fitted with pressure gauge, against weighted
platform. The testing programme consists of two cy-
cles of loading. One up to the working load (design
load) and the other one up to 1.5 to 2.0 times the
working load. Each load increment is usually main-
tained until the rate of settlement is less than 0.25
mm/hour.
Pile diameter B ranges between 0.45 and 1.10 m.
The slenderness ratio D/B (Length/Diameter) varies
from 10 to 36.7. Pile concrete compressive strength
usually ranges between 20 and 40 MPa.
2.2 The SPT test features
SPT test is the most commonly used in-situ test in
the UAE. Typical SPT hammer has a mass of 63.5
Experimental data

Axial load Q (kN)

kg falling form a height of 760 mm. The drive shoe 2500

has a length of 75 mm and internal diameter of 35 Hyperbolic fitting

mm. Corrections recommended to take into account 2000

the ground water table or the vertical overburden

1500
pressure effects on N values are applied if they are
prescribed by the methods tested here. 1000

2.3 Soil material 500

Most of the region of Arabian Gulf was subject in 0

0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5
past geological eras to extensive carbonate sedimen-
tation. Deposits of the UAE are mostly Pleistocene Cumulative pile settlement v0 (mm)
or recent in age. The superficial deposits mainly
consist of sand dunes, loess, marine sand and silts.
Typical soil material encountered in the sites studied Figure 1.Typical Q-v0 curve
is fine grained to medium grained, slightly silty to
silty sand with traces of gravel, gypsum, shell frag-
ments and cemented sand pieces. Ground water level
was recorded from 0.0 to 6.50 m below soil surface.
In every site were drilled two to three SPT boreholes 30000

with recovery of disturbed samples for usual identi- Q l = Q ( B / 10 )

Q (hyper. fitt.) kN

fication laboratory tests. Blow counts (N value) at 25000

piles base varies between 42 to 100 blows/30 cm, 20000

which correspond to dense to very dense deposits.
15000

10000
3 INTERPRETATION OF PILES LOADING
TESTS 5000

Typical load-top settlement Q-v0 curve is shown in 0

0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000
figure 1 with a usual hyperbolic shape. The ultimate Q (B/10) kN
load Ql theoretically corresponds to an infinite pile
top settlement and therefore to a horizontal as-
ymptote of Q-v0 for large settlements. It is con-
ventionally defined in many standards as the load Figure 2. Comparison between limit vertical load and conven-
corresponding to a settlement of 10 % of B. tional value
According to usual recommendations in the pile
foundations literature, load-settlement curve shape
usually fits well a hyperbolic function like: ventional value of Ql, as illustrated by figure 2
( Bouafia, 2001).

Q = v0 (1) 4 METHODS OF COMPUTATION OF PILE

1 + v0
α Ql BEARING CAPACITY

The vertical limit load Ql on a pile, usually called

where α is the initial slope of Q-v0 curve. The pro-
cedure of hyperbolic fitting by least squares was ap-
plied to the piles analysed. In all cases the correla-
tion coefficient R was found greater than 0.85,
which indicates good quality of the fitting procedure
of experimental data.
It is to be noted that Ql derived from the hyperbolic
formulation is in excellent accordance with the con-
pile bearing capacity, is the sum of the limit load Qp
at pile base, or end bearing capacity, and the limit
load Qs due to skin friction stresses mobilised along
the soil/pile interface. Thus for circular uniform
shaped piles :
Ql =Q p +Qs = ql π.B 2 +π.B∫ qs.dz
D
(2)
4 0
The SPT-based methods of pile bearing capacity
computation in sandy soils may be divided into two
main categories. The first one contains empirical
methods derived from back-analysis of databases of
pile loading tests in correlation with N value. The
end bearing capacity is assumed to be proportional
to a representative Ne value around the pile base:
ql = Ks.N (3)
The limit skin friction stress at a given depth is pro-
portional to the N value at this depth:
qs = ns.N (4)
Ks and ns have the unit of stress and are respectively
called tip resistance factor and skin friction factor.
Methods 1-9 summarised in table 1belong to this
category whereas method 10 belong to the following
category.
The second category comprises semi-empirical
methods based on theoretical formulas of the end
bearing capacity and limit skin friction along the pile
adjusted by experimental observations of pile behav-
iour. Hansen-Burland’s method is a typical theoreti-
cal method which may be empirically adjusted as it
will be further detailed. The end bearing capacity is
expressed as follows:
Nq = Nqs .sq .dq (5)
Nqs corresponds to an ideal strip footing and theo-
retically depends only on ϕ. sq is a shape factor and
dq is a depth factor which depends on ϕ and the
slenderness ratio. For infinite depths, Hansen’s Nq
factor reaches an asymptotic value.
The term Ko.tgδ was found slightly varying for N
values between 10 and 50. This fact shows that the
choice of ϕ-N correlation has little effect on the val-
ues of skin friction stress.
In some methods the vertical effective overbur-
den pressure σv0’ along the pile is required. The
computation procedure is as follows:
- The friction angle ϕ is estimated according to
Peck-Hanson’s ϕ-N value chart (Peck at al, 1973)
which may be fitted for N less than 55 by the follow-
ing linear relation :
ϕ(°) = 27.560 + 0.274xN (6)
- The submerged unit weight may be computed by:
γs γw
γ'=( )(1− ) (8)
1+ m γs
tgϕ
The specific unit weight γs was taken equal to 26.5
kN/m3.
- The effective overburden pressure is the computed
as :
σv’= ∑ γi’.Zi (9)
Table 1 summarises main features of the methods to
be assessed in this paper. In most of the cases, loca-
tion of piles is not specified with respect to bore-
holes. In order to take into consideration the non
homogeneity of soils, the calculation of pile bearing
capacity was done for each borehole in the site,
which necessitates 107 cases to be computed by
each method. A computer program was made for ac-
complishing this task.
Primary theoretical predictions of Hansen-
Burland’s method were adjusted by an empirical fac-
tor λ in such a way as the values of bearing capacity
Ql correspond within a reasonable tolerance to those
derived from pile loading tests.
Adjustment factor λ was found depending on the
representative N value at pile base, as shown in fig-
ure 3. Moreover, it was noticed this factor does not
depend on the slenderness ratio D/B. The Variation
of λ-N value, as illustrated by figure 3, seems to be
reasonably linear with :
λ=0.0512xNe (10)
5
Hansen-Burland
4 λ=Ql/Qlexp.
3

- The void ratio e is correlated with ϕ, the internal

λ

2
friction angle of sand, by Caquot-Kerisel’s empirical
correlation:
1
e.tgϕ =m (7)
where m is an empirical factor ranging between
0.40 and 0.60 for silica sands. The analysis made 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
by the author on 59 sandy samples subject to direct
shear tests from different sites has shown the above Ne
relation fits the best the experimental data with m=
Figure 3. Variation of the adjustment factor λ versus Ns
0.50 (Bouafia, 2000).
Table 1. Summary of features of the different methods

References Ks (kPa) ns (kPa) Ne & zone of influence Pile installation.

Bazaraa & Kurkur (1986) 135 if B≤0.5 m 0.67 if B≤0.5 m Average within [D-
1 270xB else 1.34xB else 3.75xB, D+B] bored
( B in m) (B in m)
400 in sand qs=10x(N/3+1)
2 Decourt (1982) 250 in residual (in kPa ) bored
silty sand
3 Lopes & Laprovitera 98.4 in sand 1.62 in sand Average within [D- bored
(1988) 87.0 in silty sand 1.94 in silty sand B, D+B]
120 1 -Average within bored
4 Meyerhof (1976) 400 2 [D-8B, D+3B] driven
CFEM (1985) -correction due
to depth effect
100 1 bored
5 Shioi et Al (1982)
300 2 driven
286 in sand 2.00 in sand Average of the 3 N val-
6 Aoki et Velloso (1975) 228 in silty sand 2.28 in silty sand ues closest to pile base bored
- average of N1 and N2
7 PHRI Standard (1980) -correction due to
400 2 ground water effect driven
60 if B=0.52-1.27
8 Reese et Al (1989) 76/B if B>1.27 m 3.3 bored
(B in m)
115 1.90 bored
9 Robert (1997)
190 1.90 -correction due driven
to depth effect
’
ql= Nq. σ v (D) -Average within
Nq = Hansen’s bearing capacity factor [D-B/2, D+2B]
Nq =f(ϕ ) ϕ derived from ϕ-N chart
10 Hansen-Burland (1973) qs = K0.σv’.tgδ Burland’s β formula
K0 = (1-sinϕ).(OCR)1/2 (OCR=1) - correction due
intermediate roughness of pile shaft : to ground water
δ= 0.75xϕ effect

5 ASSESSEMENT OF PREDICTIONS
Table 2 summarises some statistics related to each
method tested. µ is defined as the ratio of predicted
baring capacity to the one experimentally derived.
SD and COV respectively mean standard deviation
and coefficient of variation (ratio average/SD) of the
ratio µ. The underprediction rate is defined as the
percentage of cases underpredicted.
From table 2, since the coefficient of variation is
almost same for all the methods, it can be concluded
that these methods are characterised by the same
level of dispersion of predictions with respect to the
mean values of µ.
Figure 4 shows that Decourt’s method in all the
cases has overpredicted the bearing capacity.
According to table 1, this fact may be explained by
relatively high values of factors Ks and ns.
The same explanation is possible for Aoki and Vel-
losos’s method which has overpredicted almost all
the cases with an average value of 1.91 for µ.
Meyerohf’s method and CFEM(1985) have un-
derpredicted most of cases with an average value of
0.70 for the ratio µ. The pessimistic prediction
which may justify the large use of this method was
already highlighted by many authors working on
similar databases ( Turnbull and Kaufmann 1956,
Mansur & Focht 1960). According to table 2, the
factor ns of Meyerhof’s method for bored piles is the
smallest one. Moreover, N values used in this
method are to be reduced by the so-called depth ef-
fect.
Table 2. Results of assessment of the methods

Method Average Min Max SD. COV % Underprediction Overprediction rate %

No. of µ rate %
1 0.97 0.35 1.92 0.31 31.8 58.0 42.0
2 3.13 1.29 6.55 0.99 31.6 0.0 100.0
3 0.95 0.37 2.40 0.32 33.2 68.2 31.7
4 0.70 0.31 2.03 0.25 36.2 94.4 5.6
5 0.82 0.36 1.86 0.27 31.6 83.2 16.8
6 1.91 0.86 4.27 0.60 31.3 7.5 92.5
8 1.11 0.43 3.08 0.40 36.0 50.5 49.5
9 0.98 0.44 2.56 0.34 35.1 66.3 33.7
10 0.93 0.32 1.54 0.30 32.3 67.3 32.7

20000 50000
30000

Meyerhof, CFEM Aoki-Velloso Decourt-Quaresma

25000 40000
15000
20000
30000
xp.
Q pred. (kN)

Qe
10000
.= 15000
pred 20000
Q
10000
5000 10000
5000
0
0 0 5000 10000 15000 20000
0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000

Qexp.
Qex(kN)
p. (kN)

20000 20000
20000
Reese-O'Neill Shioi-Fukui Hansen-Burland adjusted
15000 15000
15000

10000 10000 10000

5000 5000 5000

0 0 0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000

20000
20000
Robert 20000
Bazarra-Kurkur Lopes-Laprovitera
15000 15000
15000
Q pred. (kN)

10000 10000
10000

5000 5000
5000

0
0 0 0 5000 10000 15000 20000
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 0 5000 10000 15000 20000
Qexp. (kN)

Figure 4. Comparison of predicted and experimental values of bearing capacity of bored piles for each method
 20 Aoki-Velloso
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
20 Meyerhof
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
20 Shioi-Fukui
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
Number of cases

20
Reese -O'Neill
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
20 Hansen-Burland
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
20 Lopes-Laprovitera
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
20 Bazarra-Kurkur
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0
20 Robert
0
0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0

Figure 5. Histograms of µ counts for different methods tested

As illustrated by figure 4, methods of Robert,
Lopes & Laprovitera, Bazarra & Kurkur and Han-
sen & Burland seem giving the best prediction with
a range of µ between 0.93 and 0.98. They can be
considered as rather pessimistic since almost two
third of cases were underpredicted by these meth-
ods.
The prediction of the semi-empirical Hansen-
Burland’s method seems better than many other
purely empirical methods, which encourages to
improve the quality of adjustment of this approach.
According to figure 5, histograms of µ counts
may be fitted by a Gaussian distribution. If one de-
fines the criterion of ranking of these methods as
the frequency counts of µ between 0.8 and 1.0,
Robert, Lopes & Laprovitera, Bazarra & Kurkur
and Hansen & Burland are respectively character-
ised by the frequencies of 30.8 %, 28.9%, 24.3%
and 21.5%.
6 CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of a database comprising 46 static
pile loading tests carried out in 27 silty sand an
evaluation study of nine SPT-based methods of
pile bearing capacity calculation was undertaken.
The quality of prediction of these methods is as-
sessed by direct comparison of the predicted limit
vertical load carried by the pile to the one experi-
mentally derived from static pile loading test.
Decourt and Aoki-Velloso’s methods were
found optimistic in most of the cases studied
whereas Meyerhof’s method is rather pessimistic.
The semi-empirical Hansen-Burland’s method
allows very good prediction in comparison with
the other empirical approaches.
Methods of Robert, Lopes & Laprovitera, Ba-
zarra & Kurkur and Hansen & Burland give an
average value of the ratio µ (ratio load predicted to
experimental load) ranging between 0.93 and 0.98.
According the ranking criterion defined as the fre-
quency count of µ ranging between 0.8 and 1.0,
methods of Robert, Lopes & Laprovitera, Bazarra
& Kurkur and Hansen & Burland are respectively
characterised by the frequencies of 30.8 %, 28.9%,
24.3% and 21.5%. However, al the methods tested
express some dispersion of prediction with a coef-
ficient of variation of about 30% with respect to
the mean value.
7 REFERENCES
Aoki,N & Veloso,D.1975.An approximate method to esti-
mate the bearing capacity of piles. Proceedings of the 5th
Pan-American Conference on soil Mechanics and Foun-
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Bazarra, A.R & Kurkur,M.M.1986. N-values used to predict
settlements of piles in Egypt. In: Use of In-situ tests in
geotechnical engineering, ASCE Geotech. Special Publi-
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