Experimental Study on Bearing Behavior and Soil Squeezing of Jacked Pile in Stiff Clay

Abstract

In order to study the bearing behavior and soil-squeezing of jacked piles in stiff clay, two groups of pile penetration tests were performed, with a rough pile that can reproduce the quick-shear behavior of the pile–soil interface, i.e., group 1 in stiffer clay, and group 2 in softer clay for comparison. For each group, the adjacent pile was additionally penetrated at different pile spacings to study the soil-squeezing effect on an adjacent pile. The results show that the penetration resistance increased rapidly at the beginning and then increased at a lower rate. This is because the resistance at the pile end increased rapidly at the beginning and then kept stable with fluctuations, whereas the resistance at the pile side continually increased due to the increasing contact area. Therefore, the ratio of the resistance at the pile end to the total penetration resistance exhibited a softening behavior, which first increased to a peak and then gradually decreased. In addition, there was soil-squeezing stress and soil-squeezing displacement in the ground and adjacent piles due to pile penetration. In stiffer clay, the soil-squeezing stress was larger than that in softer clay due to the higher strength, whereas the soil-squeezing displacement was smaller than that in softer clay due to the low compressibility. In addition, the nonlinear equation form y = ae−bx can be employed to describe the effect of pile spacing on the vertical flotation, horizontal deviation, and pile strain of the adjacent pile.