Experimental Investigation on Vertical Piles in Dense Sand Medium under Axial and Lateral Loads

Vertical piles are used in such structures which receive the heavy loads especially the structures like dry docks, basements and like pumping stations to resist the uplift loads. The loads which are coming on piles are the combination of both vertical and lateral loads, a very few number of researches has been done on this response of pile groups subjected to the combination of both loads. Here the interaction of pile-soil-pile in the structure is to be observed. In this paper we are discussing and presenting the experiments on different piles in dense sand medium, and the behavior of vertical piles under both axial and lateral loads. The combined load test results showed that the resistance, lateral displacement and efficiency at the head of the piles increased substantially for tests performed in the presence of axial loads, suggesting that the presence of axial loads on individual and groups of piles driven in dense sand is detrimental to their lateral capacity