Load Sharing mechanism of Piled-Raft-Foundations

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In practice, deep foundations are made of a set of piles connected together with a concrete raft.The role of the raft is to transfer the column load to the piles uniformly. It does not howevershare the building load with the piles. While engineers often design raft foundation alone to carrythe entire building load. Accordingly the design of pile foundations is regarded as highlyconservative, in fact uneconomical.The concept of Piled-Raft-Foundation has been increasingly receiving recognition around theworld. While engineers recognize the contribution of the raft to the foundation loads, research inthis field has been lagging to estimate the raft share. This is due to the fact that interaction amongthe piles/soil/raft is complex in nature and field testing is difficult at best.In the literature, several reports can be found dealing with the load-settlement relationship ofpiled-raft foundations. Nevertheless, these reports are based on limited modeling, and failed torecognize the effect of some vital governing parameters and the three-dimensional stressdeformationmechanism, which take place within the piled-raft foundation.In this proposal; experimental and numerical investigations on piles-raft foundation will beperformed. A three-dimensional numerical model will be developed to simulate the case of piled-raftfoundation and laboratory tests will be conducted on prototype experimental set-up. Aftervalidating the numerical model with the experimental results and the data available in theliterature, the model will be used examine the parameters, believed to govern the performance ofthis foundation.The results of this study will have significant economic impact on the construction of piled-raftfoundations for high-rise buildings without compromising on the safety. It is expecting that thedesign theories, guidelines and recommendations developed will be incorporated in the CanadianFoundation Engineering manual and American Society of Civil Engineers manual of practice. It is equally important to take note that this project will provide training to the Highly Qualified Personnel and scientists.