Driven Precast Piles Trimmed to ground level - Heavy vehicles 150 tonnes+ tracking and driving over

[Dodgy Piler]

Hi,

What is a good way to check if these piles are ok?

I've installed 275mm square precast concrete piles in a garbage landfill site to refusal on bedrock.

To allow access for other trades and their light vehicles, I let the builder trim the piles to ground level.

But now they've told me they have been walking over them with 150 tonne cranes. Note, these piles are cut flush with the piling platform.

The ground is nothing but fill and waste, granular material and soft loose material to bedrock. Piles are in the ground roughly 10 metres.

Obviously I am worried about inducing shear and bending and therefore cracking the piles. I don't want to have to mobilise a piling rig to site and dynamic test the piles either.

Is there a way I can analyse? I have tried WALLAP analysis of a single pile and applying a vertical surcharge equivalent to the crane weight and it gives me small moments and shear (<10kNm). Repute 2.5 doesn't help either as off-setting a vertical load just creates an eccentric moment. I want to know the soil-pile interaction. And no, I don't have plaxis.

 

[MTNClimber]

Get some instrumentation folks out there. PDA or PIT testing should be able to confirm if they are still intact.

 

[Retrograde]

A single 275mm pile should have a working capacity of around 90 tonne so I doubt that running the crane over them did any harm.

PIT/SIT testing should show up any major damage.

 

[Dodgy Piler]

Thanks fellas. I will do some PIT testing to ease my confidence