Consolidation solution of soil around a permeable pipe pile

Abstract

In practice, how to quickly improve the bearing capacity of piles in a short time is of great significance. In view of this, a technique of setting grooves and installing PVDs (prefabricated vertical drains) at the surface of the pile is proposed in this investigation to accelerate the consolidation of the surrounding soil. A radial and circular consolidation model is established for permeable piles. The finite cosine transform, finite Weber transform, and discretization method are used to obtain a semi-analytical solution for the consolidation model with a mixed drainage boundary condition at the surface of the pile. The sensitivity of the consolidation process to the strip number and the width of PVDs is discussed. The results show that the technique of installing PVDs in piles could potentially improve the bearing capacity. When the area of drainage channels is fixed, the bearing capacity of permeable piles can be more effectively improved by using a higher strip number of PVDs and a smaller PVD width.

Keywords:

• Permeable pile
• pile installation
• mixed-type boundary condition
• semi-analytical solution
• average degree of consolidation

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

Research leading to this paper has been partially supported by Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions under Grant NO. 17KJD610003 and Qin Lan Project of Jiangsu Province.