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Proceedings of Indian Geotechnical Conference

December 22-24,2013, Roorkee


ROLE OF RELATIVE STIFFNESS IN PILED-RAFT FOUNDATION SYSTEM


Prashant Garg, Assistant professor (Civil Engineering), GNDEC,Ludhiana,prashant.ced@gmail.com
J.N.Jha, Professor and Head (Civil Engineering), GNDEC, Ludhiana,jagadanand@gmail.com
Harvinder Singh, Associate Professor (Civil Engineering) GNDEC, Ludhiana,hvs1221@gmail.com


ABSTRACT: In the present study a parametric study to observe the behaviour of pile raft foundation system
(PRFS) with relative stiffness of raft is conducted by modelling the PRFS in FEM based software Plaxis 3D.
Elasto-Plastic material model is used for soil and Linear Elastic model was taken for Pile and Raft. Mohr Coulomb
model has been used for analysis..It is observed that Stiffness of soil has a great influence on the load transfer
mechanism of PRFS. With the increase in soil stiffness, the load transfer by piles decreases while load shared by
raft increases and the overall and differential settlement reduces. It is also observed that raft thickness has
negligible effect on load transfer mechanism and settlement of foundation.


INTRODUCTION
Foundation is an integral part of a structure and
costs about 20% of the total project cost. An
attempt has been being made by researchers to
economies the foundation without
compromising the safety and design of Pile raft is
one of such example. In conventional design of
pile only piles are designed to transfer the whole
weight of superstructure to soil whereas raft piles
are designed as a pile cap and has no role in load
transfer to soil. In pile raft foundations, raft is also
designed to transfer partial load to the soil hence
the number of piles or its geometry (diameter,
length) may be reduced without compromising the
safety of structure. In design of Piled Raft
foundation stiffness of soil over foundation and
piles plays an important role.
The concept of piled-raft foundations is by no
means new. Various methods of analysis of piled-
raft foundations have been developed in particular
over the past few decades. Many researchers have
studied independently the behaviour of piled raft
through analytical and numerical models. Heavily
loaded structures have been supported successfully
on the piled-raft and results have been reported in
literature [1-7].
In the present study, effect of relative stiffness of
piled raft foundation to the soil stiffness over
various parameters as settlement, load shared by




piles to raft etc are observed using a three
dimensional Finite Element based software (Plaxis
3D) in which octahedral elements are taken for
analysis, Elasto-Plastic material model is used for
soil and Linear Elastic model is taken for Pile and
Raft. Mohr Coulomb model is used for analysis.


PARAMETRIC STUDY
A parametric study is performed to link and
establish the influence of various key parameters of
the piled-raft foundation system on its load
carrying capacity and percentage of load shared by
piles. The foundation system is modeled using the
PLAXIS 3D foundation finite element based
software. The key geometrical variables used in the
generation of foundation system are summarized in
Table 1. Numbers of cases are modeled and studied
by considering various combinations of the
Modulus of elasticity of soil, raft and pile keeping
the length(L), diameter(d) and raft thickness(t)
constant The length of pile is taken as 12m,
diameter as 0.4m and raft thickness as 0.5 m. The
foundation thickness of the piled-raft foundation
system is also varied to observe the influence of
raft thickness on overall settlement and differential
settlement.




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Prashant Garg, J.N.Jha , Harvinder Singh
Table 1 List of Variables
Mod.of
Elasticity of
Soil(E
s
)
kN/m
2

Mod. of
Elasticity of
Raft(Er)
kN/m
2

Raft
Thickness
(t), mm
25000
50000
75000
2.0x10
7

2.5x10
7
3.0x10
7

500
1000
1500
100000
125000
3.5x10
7

4.0x10
7
2000
2500
3000


The clay soil is considered for the parametric study
and analysis. The properties of the soil are shown
in Table 2.

Table 2 Properties of soil
Property Unit Value
Unit weight unsat
Saturated unit weight
sat

[kN/m]
[kN/m]
16
18.7
Young modulus Eref

Poisson ratio
Shear modulus Gref
Young modulus Eoed
Cohesion cref
Friction angle
Dialantancy angle
Interface strength R
inter

[kN/m]

[-]
[kN/m2]
[kN/m2]
[]
[]
[]
[-]
2.500E+04
to
1.25 E+06
0.30
8607.407
4.210E+04
35
26
0.75

The foundation system is simulated under a
uniform vertical floor load of 187kN/m
2
imposed
on whole of raft and its behavior is observed.
A typical meshed model of the foundation system
is shown in Fig.1 and 2.

Fig 1: Typical finite element mesh of piled-raft

Fig 2: Typical 3D finite element mesh of soil and
PRFS

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Effect of Stiffness of Soil :
Overall and differential settlement of foundation
system decreases with increase in Modulus of
elasticity (E) of soil which is a indicator of soil
stiffness as shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. The
percentage decrease in settlement is as large as
54.4% if Modulus of Elasticity increases from
25000 kN/m
2
to 50000 kN/m
2
and it decreases upto
20% when E of Soil increases from100000 kN/m
2

to 125000 kN/m
2
,While for the same range of
Modulus of elasticity differential settlement
decreases upto73.3 % initially and reduced to 30%
when E of Soil increases from100000 kN/m
2
to
125000 kN/m
2
.


Fig 3: Influence of stiffness on total settlement of
raft pile system
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
0 1 2 3 4
E

o
f

S
o
i
l

(
K
N
/
M
2
)
X

1
0
3

Settlement (mm)
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Role of Relative Stiffness in Piled raft Foundation system

Fig 4: Influence of stiffness of soil on differential
settlement of raft pile system



Fig 5: Influence of stiffness on the contact pressue
on raft in raft pile system

It is also observed that with increase in modulus of
Elasticity of soil, the contact pressure on raft
increases marginally (fig 5) and load shared by
raft( Pile cap) increases and hence load on piles
decreases as shown in Fig. 6.



Fig 6: Influence of stiffness of Soil to % load
shared by piles for different stiffness of Raft

It is also observed from Fig. 7 that with the
increase of Elastic Modulus of Raft ( indicator of
stiffness), the percentage shared by piles increases,
but the increase is significant as the relative
stiffness of raft (ratio of Mod. of elasticity of raft to
the Mod. of Elasticity of soil) increases upto a
value of 400 and after that the rate of percentage
of total load shared by pile become almost constant
as indicated in Fig. 7. The relationship between the
relative stiffness of raft with percentage of total
load shared by piles is estimated by following a
polynomial equation (1). The regression constant is
97.6% which shows a good relationship.

P
l
/P=-4x10
5
(E
R
/E
S
)
2
+.051(E
R
/E
S
)+35.53, -- (1)
Where P
l
is % of total ultimate load shared by Pile,
P is total ultimate load bored by Pile Raft system,
E
R
is the modulus of elasticity of raft and E
S
is the
Modulus of

soil.

0
25
50
75
100
125
150
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
E

S
o
i
l

(
K
n
/
m
2
)
X
1
0
3

Diff. Settlement (mm)
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140
E


S
o
i
l

(
K
n
/
m
2
)
X

1
0
3

Contact Pressure (Kn/m2)
y = 1E-05x
3
- 0.0033x
2
+
0.1515x + 48.24
42
44
46
48
50
52
54
25 50 75 100 125 150
%

L
O
A
D

S
H
A
R
E
D

B
Y

P
I
L
E
S

MOD. OF ELASTICITY OF SOIL(
kN/m
2
)X 10
3

E(Raft)=200
0MPa
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Prashant Garg, J.N.Jha , Harvinder Singh

Fig 7: Influence of relative stiffness of raft to Soil
to % load shared by piles

Raft Thickness:
Fig. 8 indicates that the raft thickness does not
have any appreciable effect on the load carrying
capacity of the piled raft system. Rather it is useful
for reason other than the load carrying capacity viz:
enhanced punching shear capacity of the raft and
stiffness of footing. In the parametric study, the raft
thickness of the footing system is varied by
keeping the spacing, number and diameter of piles
as constant. Uniform vertical floor loading of
187kN/m
2
is applied on the whole floor.


Fig 8: Variation of the load carrying capacity with
raft thickness
The results are found to be in good agreement with
the reported value in literature [8]. The load shared
by the pile also increases marginally upto a raft
thickness of 1.5 m after that it shows a decreasing
trend. The overall load taken by the pile raft
foundation increases with the increase in raft
thickness with a non significant rate. With the
increase of 400% in raft thickness, the load bearing
capacity increases about only 24%.
The overall settlement with the increase in raft
thickness also shows similar trend as depicted from
Fig. 9.



Fig 9: Variation of the Settlement with raft
thickness

CONCLUSION
The following conclusions are drawn from the
study:
Stiffness of soil has a very significant impact
on overall settlement and differential settlement
of combined piled raft system.
With increase in soil stiffness contact pressure
on raft increases and load shared by piles
decreases.
As Relative stiffness of raft, the load shared by
piles increases significantly and beyond a value
of 400, relative stiffness has almost no
influence on load sharing mechanism.
With increases in relative stiffness of raft to
soil, the load carrying by pile raft system
increases and follow a polynomial equation as
P
l
/P=-4x10
-5
(E
R
/E
s
)
2
+0.051(E
R
/E
s
)+35.53. with
good correlation coefficient R
2
=97.6
Raft thickness has not a very significant impact
on load carrying capacity as by increasing
400% raft thickness, load bearing capacity
increases only 24%.Raft thickness of the PRFS
also has no impact on settlement.
42
44
46
48
50
52
54
0 2 4 6 8 10
%

L
o
a
d

s
h
a
r
e
d

b
y

P
I
l
e

Relative stiffness of Raft( E
R
/E
S
)X 100
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
0 1 2 3
L
O
A
D
(
k
N
)

X

1
0
3

RAFT THICKNESS(m)
LOAD
0
1
2
0 1 2 3
S
E
T
T
L
E
M
E
N
T
(
m
m
)

RAFT THICKNESS (m)
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Role of Relative Stiffness in Piled raft Foundation system
REFERENCES
1 Randolph, M.F. (1994), Design Methods for
Pile Groups and Piled Rafts S.O.A. Report,
13th the International Conference of Soil
Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, New
Delhi, Vol. 5, 61-82
2 Poulos, H.G. (2001), Piled raft foundation:
design and applications, Geotechnique, 51(2),
95-113.
3 Gandhi, S. R and. Maharaj, D.K. (1996),
Settlement Behaviour of Piled Raft
Foundations, Indian Geotechnical
Conference, December 7-11, Madras, India.
4 OH E.Y.N, Huang M , Surarak, Adamec R
and Balasurbamaniam A.S.(2008), Finite
Element Modeling for Piled Raft
Foundations in Sand, Proceedings of 11th
Asia- Pacific Conference on structural
Engineering and Construction, Taipei,
Taiwan, Nov. 19-21, 2008.






























5 Singh N. T., Singh B.,(2008), Interaction
Analysis for Piled Rafts in Cohesive Soils,
Proceedings of 12th International Conference
of International Association For Computer
Methods and Advances in Geomechanics,
Goa, India, 2008.
6 Lee J .H., Youngho K. and Sangseom J .
(2009),Three-Dimensional Analysis of
Bearing Behavior of Piled Raft on Soft Clay,
Computer and Geotechnics, 37, 103-114.
7 Singh K., J ha J .N.,Singh H. and Garg P.,
(2012). An Innovative procedure for
Proportioning Piled Strip foundation System,
Proceeding, Indian Geotechnical Conference,
Vol-1. Pp 564-567.
8 BIS-2911-part III (1980), Code of Practice
for Design and Construction of Pile
Foundation-Under reamed piles.



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