Assesment of low strain wave attenuation for piles cast in very dense granular soil

• Main Authors: Nazir, Ramli, El Hussein, Osman
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/34353/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

In low strain testing of piles, soil within which the pile is embedded causes attenuation of propagated stress wave. The pile-soil interaction effect on low strain integrity test is not properly identified; however, it may lead to inconclusive results when piles are embedded in very dense soil. In this paper a method to estimate soil effects on low strain wave attenuation is proposed. Numerical analysis is utilized to arrive to a theoretical model, which accommodates soil effects on wave propagation in pile body. The proposed model assuming pile casted in very dense granular soil is compared with PIT-S software, which simulates propagation of low strain waves for similar pile-soil conditions. Generally, wave attenuations estimated by both methods were found to be close for pile subjected to short duration light impact.