CE 462 Foundation Engineering II Department of Civil Engineering

Middle East Technical University, Ankara,Turkey Prof. Dr. K. Önder Çetin

ASSIGNMENT 4
Due: 16.05.2014
1) If a group of piles with 50 cm diameter is placed 1.5 m center to center and joined at
the top by a square pile raft (cap) supported by nine piles, based on the equivalent raft
foundation concept, estimate the group efficiency of these 10 m long floating piles if
they are installed in deep uniform soft clay layer with an undrained shear strength of
45 kPa. Compare your result with the values recommended by DM-7.7 (1982) as
given below.

2) Estimate the elastic settlement of the pile group defined in Question 1, if a uniform
foundation stress of 60 kPa is applied at the pile raft.
Hint: Undrained Young’s Modulus of clay can be adopted as Eu,clay=400.cu
Note that these piles are floating piles!

3) For the same pile group, estimate the consolidation settlement, if soft clay layer is
assumed to be 25 m thick with a representative SPT N value of 10 blows/30 cm and
PI=35.

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Assignment 5: Pile Groups Subjected to Compressive Loads
CE 462 Foundation Engineering II Department of Civil Engineering
Middle East Technical University, Ankara,Turkey Prof. Dr. K. Önder Çetin

4) If settlement of a single pile in normally consolidated sand layer is estimated as 9

mm. What will be your best guess of pile group settlement if a total of 9 pieces of 50
cm diameter piles are installed at a spacing of 1.5 m to form a square pile raft?

5) A pile group consisting of 16 pieces of 10 meter long and 50 cm diameter steel piles
driven at a 1.5 m spacing into a sand layer of 30 meters. SPT profile of the soil site is
given in Table 1. Estimate the pile group settlement for p=50 kPa load.

Depth N60 (blows/30 cm)

(m)
1.5 4
3.0 4
4.5 8
6.0 6
7.5 12
9 14
10.5 14
12 16
13.5 16

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Assignment 5: Pile Groups Subjected to Compressive Loads