Shaft friction of piles in clay -asimplefundamental approach Dr. JOHN BURLAND, Head, Geotechnical Division, Building Research Station Introduction ‘Many engineers hold tl factors controlling the behaviour of a pil ‘and ite maximum load carrying capacity ‘are t00 complex to study in a fundamental way end that our understanding must of ‘ecessity stem from an empirical approach based on carrying out load tests. How- fever, just as there are dangers in the purely theoretical approach £0. too are there dangers in empiricism which takes ho account of well established fundamen: tals, The art of ground engineering the ability to combine the established ciples of soil mechanics with exper 2 and judgement. ‘This paper outlines an approach to the calculation of the shalt resistance of piles in clay using simp ciples. Although the method invol number of simplifying assumptions pears to account for many of the observ features of pile behaviour and may prove Uselul for estimating shaft resistance and negative skin friction in new or unusual ground conditions. Conventional method of analysis ‘The conventional method af estimating the load carrying capacity of a pile makes tte of the undrained strength of the cley in the calculation of both the end bearing capacity and the shaft bearing capacity "The ultimate bearing capacity of the pile base Quy ie given to e sufficient accuracy by: the Tormuta: Oe aE oy wh ‘A, is the erea of the base Ny iso boating capacity factor usually taken a5 9.0 ‘and ©, ie the Undrained strength of the Clay beneath the base. ‘Although care is needed in measuring cy, particularly in stiff fseured clays. (Bur- ‘ond Dunican (1966), its use justified for two portion of the total resistance of the pile Secondly, in the fong term the soil beneath ‘the base will normally experience an in- ‘crease in affective stress and a consequent increase in strength. Hence the undrained Bearing capscity represents @ sate lower limit Te is customary to relate the average shaft adhesion c, to the mean undrained strength down the shaft € by an empirical coefficient of a can 03 to a8 high os 15 depending on the soil and the type of for a given set of conditions wide range of values. More: is often no easy matter to choose 2 value of & from a plot of undrained strength against depth because of th scatter of tho results. On the bosis of @ fof tests it has been possible to assign ranges of « values to particular ‘types of pile in various ground conditions (see for example Tomlinson (1963) and (1871)). Whereas the use of undrained strength for calculating the end bearing capacity of a pile appears justified there seems little fundamental justification for relating ‘shaft adhesion to ‘undrained strength for the following reasons: (1) the major shear distortion is confined 10. a relatively thin zone. around th shaft (Cooke and Price (1973) her to oF from this narrow therefore take place rapidly during loading: 2 ur and remould’ the ground ad. jacent to the pile shaft: Quite apart from. the disturbance ‘caused by the pile there is no simple Telationship between. the undrained Strength and drained strength of the ground, There can be no doubt about the im= portance in design of empirical ralation- Ships between c, and & provided they ‘applied to the same pile type and ilar ground conditions for which they @) were estobished. Howaver, there are dangers in extrapolating them to now ond Unired situations. In these circumstances an understanding of the underlying. prin ples is essential and roqures a treatment of pile Behaviour in terme of efectve Streases. The effective. stress. approach futiined here is by no. means the only possible one but i har the virtue of being very simple Principle of effective stress Tia paper ‘desing with the stress. behaviour be quite cl stress”. Soil pre 1d soil, are filed with water stress + can only be carried by the skeleton, However, the total normal stress @ on any plane is the sum of two com: Ponents—the pressure in the pore water u fand the stress carried by the sold particles ‘and tormed the effective stress iq”. The effective stress is given by the difference tween g and uv. —u @ ‘The shear strength of soils is lergely Fig, 1. Relationship between and 2 for @ normally consolidated clay tan) Ee 10 08 06 04 02 Ground Engineering 6:3: 30-42 (973) aa> S| @ Timber - Drammen clay " 0 Concrete 6204 z 7 x Timber | Port Khorramshahr clay i 90 © Steel % € & 2 20 6 3 a 10 & £ 2 0 : 70 +20 #30 40 #50 60 70 80 90 100 Fer Effective overburden pressure ~KN/m? ns 2. Comparison between results of pile test of Port Khorramshahr clay (LL 48; P1 23: Sensitivity 25-30; a=0.43 -0.79) ‘and Drammen Clay (LL 39; PL 20; Sensitivity 4-8: a= 1.6) de rmined by the (retional forces arising dunng. ip at the contact between the soll prticles. These ere clearly a func: thon of the normal stress transmitted by the. soil skeleton rather than of the total Formal stress. The maximum shear res- ‘stance 7; 09 any plane through the soil Is therefore given by: 1 20+ (ou) tang! (=e +o" tang") @ where of and @' For present purposes it is assumed that ‘the groundwater ig static, although this is rot fundamental tothe theory. and thi ‘the pore pressure at any point is given by the depth of the point below the ‘round water level ‘up in the ground around the pile. In this paper the following essump- fsures set up during instal completely dissipated. 2, Because the zon9 of major distortion ‘around the shaft is relatively thin load- ing takes place under drained condi- tions. 3, Asa reault of remoulding during instal lation the soil has no effective cohe- ion. Hence the shaft friction +, at any point is given by T= o's tan 8 « where o', is. the “horizontal. effective tress acting on the pile ond in the effective angle of fri tion between the clay and 4. The further simplifying assumption is made that @', 1s proportional to the Vertical effective overburden pressure® Pie. Kop ©) ‘Assumption (4) is perhaps the most ques tonable end requires close examination nt. Nevertheless. logical starting O) Equation (6) is not new and has been used by Zeevaert (1959), Eide, Hutchinson ‘and Landva (1961). Johannessen ond Bjerrum (1968), Chandler (1968) end ‘The quantity K+ tan may be denoted by #30 thet Ketone ” ° Ik can be seen that 6 is similar to the ‘empirical factor @, the important dite fence being that f is related to the fund ‘mental effective stress parameters K and ‘The magnitude of the earth pressure coefficient K depends on the soil type. ‘the stress history of the soll and the method of installing the pile. The value of 3 depends on the soil type and the prop- forties of the pile surtace. Evidently # can take on a wide range of values. Neverthe. less itis possible to make reasonable est ‘round level, 75. is the density of water {nd h is the depth below the wator table. verburden pr it is possible to make estimates of ‘on fundamental soil mechanics Iwis recognised that these require modification in the pitieal evidence. This approach lustrated by applying the method to the two extreme conditions of soft ‘normally consolidated clay and sti heavily overconsolidated clay Shaft friction for piles in soft clay Te i assumed that failure. takes place in the remoulded oll close to the shaft surfoce (Tomlinson (1971)) 80 that 8 where ¢, is the remoulded drained an of friction of the soll. Before the pi inatolled the earth pressure coefficiont K i equal to K,. For a driven pile K might be expected fo be somewhat greater than K, a0 that setting K=K, should give lower limit to the shatt friction. For nor- mally consolidated clay K, has been found to be related 10 , by the expres- Substituting for ‘ives: ‘and K in equation (7) @) P= (1—sing,) tang, 1 8 lower limit for driven piles in nor- mally consolidated clay. Values of ¢, wil normally lie somewhere in the range o 20 deg to 30deg and it is interesting to ‘rote that over thie wide range the value of B only. varies from 026 to 0.29 as shown in fig. 1. This rather surprising re- sult implies that for soft clays fis not Very sensitive to clay type end that for all ‘soft clays there should be ® fairly Unique relationship between 7, and B. ‘This prediction can be checked by com- paring the values of shaft friction obtained from loading tests on piles driven into two very different soft clays. Hutchinson ‘and Jensen (1968) present the results of loading tests on # number of concrete, "and timber piles driven into deep clay in the port of Khoram- ye iquis and plastic 48 per cent and 23 per cent respectively and it has asensitivity of between 25 and 30. Values ‘of « ranged from 043 10 0.79. In fig. 2 th results of Hutchinson and Jensen he been plotted on 2 graph of #, against B ‘and are shown by the open points. Values of B (=%,/B) are also shown and it can Fig. 3. Relationship between average shatt Iniction r, and average depth far driven piles in soft clay Proximately 032. Eide, Hutchinson and Landva (1961) have presented the results of some tests ‘on. timber pile driven into Drammen clay The average liquid ond plastic limits are ‘about 35 per cent and 15'per cent respec- twvely and the clay has 8 sensitivity of between 4 and 8 The value of « obtained lade Average shaft Friction - KN/m? 10 20 3040 50 60 —— a © Steel . * Concrete {Tomlinson (1957) 4 Timber 5 HRB. (1961) v Sharman (1961) x Brand (1971) + Fellenius (1971) 2 4 © Eide etal (1967) i = Finer” uci oe . vy Steel nina 8 8 < ES z § g & Es 3 € B $ 3 2 2 10 é 12 of B20-40 “ B2025 from the test was 1.6. In fig. 2 the result of this tet is shown as full point cor fesponding to B= 032. inspite of the 7 a8 the two sites having very eerent Dropertie and the velues ofa forthe two Shes having extreme upper and. lower limits Yor sott‘clay, the average values of Bare the same. tnd only sightly larger than the. predicted lower limit value ot 023, ‘Ai ach of the two sites mentioned the density of the clay and the positon oft be imeosured y type, the results of pile tests fon soft clay shoulé. show only # am ‘scatter when plotted on a graph of ‘against average depth. In fig. 3 are plotted the results of a large number of pile tests Carried out on a wide variety of cls. Bearing in mind the possible variations in density and groundwater conditions it ean be seen that the scatter is remark: ably small. The lines showing values of have been constructed by making the assump: tion that the soil has @ bulk density of 11800 kg/m” and that the average, one metre below ground level ‘Most of the results lie between ji = 0.25 ‘and. 0.40 which represente 8 very much ‘smaller spread than the equivalent a values which lie between O8 and 1.6. It appe that the simple effective stress theory for the lower limit’ of shaft friction iS in very close agreement with the observe. tions and that the correct valve of Kis slightly higher than K, On the basis of the esults it would appear that 2 reasonable value of A to use in design would be about 03, ‘Negative skin friction ‘Negative skin friction or “drag down” can develop when piles ore driven through soft soils into. sti underlying ia or when 8 superimposed. loeding, iy in the form of fil is applied to the ‘ground surface. Negative skin friction re- Its from the consolidation of the clay 1d usualy takes a long period of time to develop fully in the case of shaft friction de- veloped during loading it soeme that nope- tive skin friction ie best accounted for in terms. of ‘ffective stress and equations (4) to (8) apply. During consolidation of the clay the pore pressures willbe signifi ‘cantly. greater then hydrostatic and. will dually decrease as consolidation pro- ‘eeds, Hence the effective overburden Pressure p 6,8) will gradually in- crease causing # corresponding increase in negative akin friction until the pore Pressures become hydrostatic. nius (1972) has presented some detailed measurements of the build up fof negative skin friction on two instru mented precast piles driver fof soft clay into a firm u The results show a negative friction with time. The sheft fric- tion was fer from fully developed at the termination of the test, but at this stage there was linear increase with depth with 14/0 (= A) equal to 0.096, Johénnessen and Bjerrum (1965) des- ceribe the results of tests on two steel a” Ground Engineering