Abstract
The structure has to be socketed into hard strata to enhance the efficiency of load carrying capacity for a substructure carrying heavy lateral load. In case of non-displacement piles, drilling the hard strata is a time consuming and expensive process. A system of experimental program was conducted on an instrumented model pile to study the behaviour of pile socketing under lateral load by varying its depth of socketing and the free standing height of pile above the ground level. The experimental results showed that increasing the depth of socketing significantly increases the lateral load carrying capacity of pile. At 3D depth socketing with 800 mm (Le/L=33.33%) free standing height, the capacities of 38.1 mm and 50.8 mm diameter piles were increased respectively by 4 and 8.23 times the capacity of 25.4 mm diameter pile. Compared with pile bearing over hard strata, socketing the pile into hard strata reduces the lateral displacements substantially
