DFI Journal - The Journal of the Deep Foundations Institute
Volume 19, Issue 1, April 2025
DOI: 10.37308/DFIJnl.20230531.282
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Revisiting Tavenas (1971): Tests on Piles in Sand
Article Type: Case Study
Bengt H. Fellenius
Abstract
Tavenas (1971) performed a sequence of static loading tests on telltale-instrumented precast concrete piles and H-piles driven in compact fine to medium sand. The first test of the sequence started at 6 m depth and continued with five more tests after driving each pile an additional 3-m length at a time. The instrumentation was intended for use in separating shaft and toe responses. In particular for the precast pile, the test results implied a strain-hardening response, which detailed back-analysis showed to be due to gradually increasing overestimation of the applied load. The original analysis and interpretation of the test records ostensibly confirmed the existence of a “critical depth”. However, when correlating the analysis to potential presence of residual force and adjusting the distribution of overburden stress to the fact that the piles had been driven in an excavation, the test data instead confirmed that, instead, all pile response followed the distribution of effective overburden stress.
Keywords:
precast concrete pile, H-pile, telltales, static loading tests, back-analysis, load-movement