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Lpile Moment capacity calculation of an Encased W-shape in a drilled shaft (Unreinforced)

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Bridge_Man

Structural
Apr 2, 2020
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Hi,

I am reviewing a design that was performed using L-Pile for a shaft foundation to support a noise wall embedded post. Basically, the post will support the panels above grade, and the same post will be embedded in a Unreinforced shaft below grade to a certain embedment.

The section defined in LPile is a Round concrete Shaft with permanent casing and core, Casing was not defined, and no reinforcement were defined as well. only the insert (w-shape) and the concrete shaft were defined as allowed by LPile

Those posts do not have shear studs below grade, and as previously mentioned, the shaft does not have any reinforcement. This design is typically used for such walls. AASHTO requires minimum vertical rebars in the shaft to consider a composite action, and since the shaft is unreinforced and no studs are available I would think that the shaft will be considered plain, and will crack when it reaches the cracking moment, and then the steel shape will be engaged which will fail once it reaches the plastic limit (assuming its compact)

LPile however, considers the embedded pile and the shaft to create a composite behavior and considers that in the moment capacity calculation. where I think it should only be limited to the steel shape, so If I calculated the plastic moment capacity of the steel shape and compared it to what LPile is providing I will find that LPile's moment capacity is much higher than the steel shape (maybe 3 times higher or more)

I do understand that there is a possibility for a partial composite action to be found, but I don't think the code allows such a thing.

I thought of using the elastic section but Please remember that I actually need the actual concrete shaft to provide the geotechnical stability of the system, but I also need the embedded post to transfer forces and provide the structural resistance of the system and exceed the moment demand along the shaft length.

Can you provide an insight into that, any recommendations, am I looking at this wrong? how to make L-pile understand what I want it to do.


Thank you!
 
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I had a quick look at LPILE for this. How do you manage to model the W insert? I can only see you being able to model the concrete, unreinforced and the casing properties. The moment capacity would be based on these properties only.

When you say steel shape what do you mean? Casing or W insert.
 
Using a round concrete shaft with a permanent casing. but you set the casing wall thickness to 0 (allowed by the software/manual) and add the encased shape as an insert.

This would be the section am interested in (no casing)
shaft_tw1ksb.png
 
PEinc, MTNClimber

I actually thought about that, but wouldn't that cause a different issue? passive resistance depends on the diameter of the shaft or in the case of the P-y curve, it would be the non-composite combined stiffness of the shaft and W section. not one of them without the other.

So if I only modeled the W section I think the software will require a much deeper embedment for stability and the moments generated will be incorrect.

Please correct me if am wrong.
Thanks!
 
I don't have or use L-Pile but do have and use CivilTech's AllPile. In AllPile, you can model 1) a casing with concrete inside, 2) concrete with a beam inside, or 3) concrete with reinforcing steel inside. You cannot model a casing with concrete and steel inside the concrete. In each case, the width for passive resistance would be the diameter of the shaft (either OD of the casing or OD of the uncased concrete). Hopefully, LPile is similar in its modelling.

 
Bride_Man - That's how I've done it in the past and haven't had an issue. I just match the diameter of the pipe pile to the drill hole diameter and create the wall thickness to make the stiffness of the piles match. The shear, moments, and deflections looked accurate to me and the structures have performed as anticipated. But I understand your concerns. It might be best to just call Ensoft and see what their opinion is since they would know best. Let us know what they say!
 
Update:

Ensoft Came back to me with an answer. It seems that the software is not set up to consider non-composite behavior and only considers composite action.

If I wish to consider that the behavior is different, I need another tool to estimate the moment curvature (bending stiffness) and input it into the program as user-defined moment curvature.

Thanks all
 
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