It was designed presuming the weight of the structure would be transferred to the piles through arching in the gravel in combination with the geogrid in the gravel; however, the H-piles are not equipped with plates on top. The pile spacing seemed to be to big for this arching to occur and...
The geotech has a difficult time explaining it. They pretty much say this is a modified load transfer platform and that when the structure is constructed, the gravel will arch to the tops of the H-piles, but I have a hard time understanding how the load from the structure gets distributed...
I am working on a project where the geotechnical design engineer has implemented a piled raft foundation for a bridge. The soil conditions in the area consist of relatively weak saturated glacial lacustrine clays (CH). In order to construct the bridge at the required elevation, an excavation...
