BEARING CAPACITY OF STEEL PIPE PILE INSTALLED BY VIBRO-HAMMER METHOD

Abstract

 Vibro-hammer method is frequently used for installing steel pipe piles which are often used for the foundation of port facilities. Recently, bearing capacity estimation method for the bearing capacity of open ended piles installed by vibro-hammer method is disappeared from official technical standards. Main reasons of disappearance is in short of the evidences of the bearing capacities of it.

 To evaluate the bearing capacity of an open-ended pile installed by vibro-hammer, model pile penetration experiments under dry model sandy ground were conducted. In the experiments, three types of installation methods including vibro-hammer method were applied. As a result, only the piles installed by vibro-hammer were fully plugged and gave large end bearing capacity as that of closed-ended piles.