The design of large open steel piles driven at chalk sites suffers from considerable uncertainty,... more The design of large open steel piles driven at chalk sites suffers from considerable uncertainty, leading to major difficulties in many significant onshore and offshore projects. This paper describes recent instrumented driving, monotonic testing to failure and re-strike tests conducted on large open steel piles driven in primarily low- to medium-density chalk at a site in North-western France. The experiments are described and interpreted with reference to a high-quality site characterisation, dynamic and static methods of test analysis and alternative predictive design approaches. Important new conclusions flow regarding driving behaviour, the set-up that took place over up to 65 days after installation and the resistances available under compression and tension loading. Surprisingly large differences are shown between tension and compression shaft capacity which are postulated to be due to Poisson straining in the steel pile shaft and its interaction with the surrounding chalk ma...
Comprehensive field investigations into the axial cyclic loading behaviour of open-steel pipe pil... more Comprehensive field investigations into the axial cyclic loading behaviour of open-steel pipe piles driven and aged in low-to-medium density chalk identify the conditions under which behaviour is stable, unstable or metastable. Post-cycling monotonic tests confirmed that stable cycling enhanced pile capacity marginally, while unstable cases suffered potentially large losses of shaft capacity. Metastable conditions led to intermediate outcomes. The patterns by which axial deflections grew under cyclic loading varied systematically with the normalised loading parameters and could be captured by simple fitting expressions. Cyclic stiffnesses also varied with loading conditions, with the highest operational shear stiffnesses falling far below the in-situ seismic test values. The monotonic and cyclic axial responses of the test piles were controlled by the behaviour of, and conditions within, the reconsolidated, de-structured, chalk putty annuli formed around pile shafts during driving. ...
This paper describes research into the poorly understood axial behaviour of piles driven in chalk... more This paper describes research into the poorly understood axial behaviour of piles driven in chalk. Comprehensive dynamic and monotonic axial testing on 27, mostly instrumented, piles undertaken for the ALPACA Joint Industry Projects is reported and interpreted covering: diameters between 139mm and 1.8m; lengths from 3 to 18m; different pile material types; tip and groundwater conditions, and ages after driving. The experiments show the factors that influence resistance most strongly are: (i) pile end-conditions, (ii) slenderness ratio and flexibility, (iii) shaft material, (iv) age after driving, (vi) relative water table depth, and (vii) whether loading is compressive or tensile. Varying the factors systematically identified a remarkable average long-term shaft resistance range from below 11 kPa to more than 200 kPa for piles driven at the same low-to-medium density chalk test site in Kent (UK). Dynamic and static analyses demonstrate that soil resistances to driving (SRD) were gen...
Low-to-medium density chalk at St Nicholas at Wade, UK, is characterised by intensive testing to ... more Low-to-medium density chalk at St Nicholas at Wade, UK, is characterised by intensive testing to inform the interpretation of axial and lateral tests on driven piles. The chalk de-structures when taken to large strains, especially under dynamic loading, leading to remarkably high pore pressures beneath penetrating CPT and driven pile tips, weak putty annuli around their shafts and degraded responses in full-displacement pressuremeter tests. Laboratory tests on carefully formed specimens explore the chalk's unstable structure and markedly time and rate-dependent mechanical behaviour. A clear hierarchy is found between profiles of peak strength with depth of Brazilian tension (BT), drained and undrained triaxial and direct simple shear (DSS) tests conducted from in-situ stress conditions. Highly instrumented triaxial tests reveal the chalk's unusual effective stress paths, markedly brittle failure behaviour from small strains and the effects of consolidating to higher than in-...
When components of granular soils are broken into smaller pieces due to an external force, the ph... more When components of granular soils are broken into smaller pieces due to an external force, the physical and mechanical properties of the soil undergo a significant change. Therefore, it is important to be able to identify the soil characteristics and understand their influence on particle crushing. Our research focused on both artificial and natural materials. Availability in different sizes and easy crushability were taken into account in choosing pasta and hydro granules as artificial materials. They can also represent the more crushable fractions in natural soils. Glass beads, another artificial material, were used to represent the finer, less crushable parts in natural soils. A wide range of crushability and grain size distribution in the natural materials was obtained by choosing a quartz sand, a glauconite sand and two carbonate sands. In order to calculate the necessary parameters, density and specific gravity were measured for each material. A first series of one dimensional...
Compressing samples between rigid platens, as in triaxial testing, induce non-uniform specimen st... more Compressing samples between rigid platens, as in triaxial testing, induce non-uniform specimen stress, strain and pore water distributions. Although well recognised historically, the effects of such platen restraints are often disregarded or overlooked when performing or interpreting monotonic and cyclic experiments. This paper presents an updated appraisal of end conditions based on laboratory experiments run on sand, glacial till, intact and puttified chalk as part of offshore piling research projects. Monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests are reported that incorporated local strain and pore pressure sensors and a range of platen configurations. New insights are reported regarding the small-to-large behaviour and undrained cyclic pore water pressure measurement.
This paper reports the cyclic behaviour of chalk, which has yet to be studied comprehensively. Mu... more This paper reports the cyclic behaviour of chalk, which has yet to be studied comprehensively. Multiple undrained high-resolution cyclic triaxial experiments on low-to-medium density intact chalk, along with index and monotonic reference tests, define the conditions under which either thousands of cycles could be applied without any deleterious effect, or failure can be provoked under specified numbers of cycles. Intact chalk's response is shown to differ from that of most saturated soils tested under comparable conditions. While chalk can be reduced to putty by severe two-way displacement-controlled cycling, its behaviour proved stable and nearly linear visco-elastic over much of the one-way, stress controlled, loading space examined, with stiffness improving over thousands of cycles, without loss of undrained shear strength. However, in cases where cyclic failure occurred, the specimens showed little sign of cyclic damage before cracking and movements on discontinuities lead t...
Chalk is present under large areas of NW Europe as a low-density, porous, weak carbonate rock. La... more Chalk is present under large areas of NW Europe as a low-density, porous, weak carbonate rock. Large numbers of offshore wind turbines, bridges and port facilities rely on piles driven in chalk. Current European practice assumes ultimate shaft resistances that appear low in comparison with the Chalk’s unconfined compression strength and CPT cone resistance ranges and can impact very significantly on project economics. Little guidance is available on pile driveability, set-up or lateral resistance in chalk, or on how piles driven in chalk can sustain axial or lateral cyclic loading. This paper describes the ALPACA (Axial-Lateral Pile Analysis for Chalk Applying multi-scale field and laboratory testing) project funded by EPSRC and Industry that is developing new design guidance through comprehensive field testing at a well-characterised low-to-medium density test site, supported by analysis of other tests. Field experiments on 36 driven piles, sixteen of which employ high resolution f...
The design of large open steel piles driven at chalk sites suffers from considerable uncertainty,... more The design of large open steel piles driven at chalk sites suffers from considerable uncertainty, leading to major difficulties in many significant onshore and offshore projects. This paper describes recent instrumented driving, monotonic testing to failure and re-strike tests conducted on large open steel piles driven in primarily low- to medium-density chalk at a site in North-western France. The experiments are described and interpreted with reference to a high-quality site characterisation, dynamic and static methods of test analysis and alternative predictive design approaches. Important new conclusions flow regarding driving behaviour, the set-up that took place over up to 65 days after installation and the resistances available under compression and tension loading. Surprisingly large differences are shown between tension and compression shaft capacity which are postulated to be due to Poisson straining in the steel pile shaft and its interaction with the surrounding chalk ma...
Comprehensive field investigations into the axial cyclic loading behaviour of open-steel pipe pil... more Comprehensive field investigations into the axial cyclic loading behaviour of open-steel pipe piles driven and aged in low-to-medium density chalk identify the conditions under which behaviour is stable, unstable or metastable. Post-cycling monotonic tests confirmed that stable cycling enhanced pile capacity marginally, while unstable cases suffered potentially large losses of shaft capacity. Metastable conditions led to intermediate outcomes. The patterns by which axial deflections grew under cyclic loading varied systematically with the normalised loading parameters and could be captured by simple fitting expressions. Cyclic stiffnesses also varied with loading conditions, with the highest operational shear stiffnesses falling far below the in-situ seismic test values. The monotonic and cyclic axial responses of the test piles were controlled by the behaviour of, and conditions within, the reconsolidated, de-structured, chalk putty annuli formed around pile shafts during driving. ...
This paper describes research into the poorly understood axial behaviour of piles driven in chalk... more This paper describes research into the poorly understood axial behaviour of piles driven in chalk. Comprehensive dynamic and monotonic axial testing on 27, mostly instrumented, piles undertaken for the ALPACA Joint Industry Projects is reported and interpreted covering: diameters between 139mm and 1.8m; lengths from 3 to 18m; different pile material types; tip and groundwater conditions, and ages after driving. The experiments show the factors that influence resistance most strongly are: (i) pile end-conditions, (ii) slenderness ratio and flexibility, (iii) shaft material, (iv) age after driving, (vi) relative water table depth, and (vii) whether loading is compressive or tensile. Varying the factors systematically identified a remarkable average long-term shaft resistance range from below 11 kPa to more than 200 kPa for piles driven at the same low-to-medium density chalk test site in Kent (UK). Dynamic and static analyses demonstrate that soil resistances to driving (SRD) were gen...
Low-to-medium density chalk at St Nicholas at Wade, UK, is characterised by intensive testing to ... more Low-to-medium density chalk at St Nicholas at Wade, UK, is characterised by intensive testing to inform the interpretation of axial and lateral tests on driven piles. The chalk de-structures when taken to large strains, especially under dynamic loading, leading to remarkably high pore pressures beneath penetrating CPT and driven pile tips, weak putty annuli around their shafts and degraded responses in full-displacement pressuremeter tests. Laboratory tests on carefully formed specimens explore the chalk's unstable structure and markedly time and rate-dependent mechanical behaviour. A clear hierarchy is found between profiles of peak strength with depth of Brazilian tension (BT), drained and undrained triaxial and direct simple shear (DSS) tests conducted from in-situ stress conditions. Highly instrumented triaxial tests reveal the chalk's unusual effective stress paths, markedly brittle failure behaviour from small strains and the effects of consolidating to higher than in-...
When components of granular soils are broken into smaller pieces due to an external force, the ph... more When components of granular soils are broken into smaller pieces due to an external force, the physical and mechanical properties of the soil undergo a significant change. Therefore, it is important to be able to identify the soil characteristics and understand their influence on particle crushing. Our research focused on both artificial and natural materials. Availability in different sizes and easy crushability were taken into account in choosing pasta and hydro granules as artificial materials. They can also represent the more crushable fractions in natural soils. Glass beads, another artificial material, were used to represent the finer, less crushable parts in natural soils. A wide range of crushability and grain size distribution in the natural materials was obtained by choosing a quartz sand, a glauconite sand and two carbonate sands. In order to calculate the necessary parameters, density and specific gravity were measured for each material. A first series of one dimensional...
Compressing samples between rigid platens, as in triaxial testing, induce non-uniform specimen st... more Compressing samples between rigid platens, as in triaxial testing, induce non-uniform specimen stress, strain and pore water distributions. Although well recognised historically, the effects of such platen restraints are often disregarded or overlooked when performing or interpreting monotonic and cyclic experiments. This paper presents an updated appraisal of end conditions based on laboratory experiments run on sand, glacial till, intact and puttified chalk as part of offshore piling research projects. Monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests are reported that incorporated local strain and pore pressure sensors and a range of platen configurations. New insights are reported regarding the small-to-large behaviour and undrained cyclic pore water pressure measurement.
This paper reports the cyclic behaviour of chalk, which has yet to be studied comprehensively. Mu... more This paper reports the cyclic behaviour of chalk, which has yet to be studied comprehensively. Multiple undrained high-resolution cyclic triaxial experiments on low-to-medium density intact chalk, along with index and monotonic reference tests, define the conditions under which either thousands of cycles could be applied without any deleterious effect, or failure can be provoked under specified numbers of cycles. Intact chalk's response is shown to differ from that of most saturated soils tested under comparable conditions. While chalk can be reduced to putty by severe two-way displacement-controlled cycling, its behaviour proved stable and nearly linear visco-elastic over much of the one-way, stress controlled, loading space examined, with stiffness improving over thousands of cycles, without loss of undrained shear strength. However, in cases where cyclic failure occurred, the specimens showed little sign of cyclic damage before cracking and movements on discontinuities lead t...
Chalk is present under large areas of NW Europe as a low-density, porous, weak carbonate rock. La... more Chalk is present under large areas of NW Europe as a low-density, porous, weak carbonate rock. Large numbers of offshore wind turbines, bridges and port facilities rely on piles driven in chalk. Current European practice assumes ultimate shaft resistances that appear low in comparison with the Chalk’s unconfined compression strength and CPT cone resistance ranges and can impact very significantly on project economics. Little guidance is available on pile driveability, set-up or lateral resistance in chalk, or on how piles driven in chalk can sustain axial or lateral cyclic loading. This paper describes the ALPACA (Axial-Lateral Pile Analysis for Chalk Applying multi-scale field and laboratory testing) project funded by EPSRC and Industry that is developing new design guidance through comprehensive field testing at a well-characterised low-to-medium density test site, supported by analysis of other tests. Field experiments on 36 driven piles, sixteen of which employ high resolution f...
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