ISSN (Online) : 2319 - 8753

ISSN (Print) : 2347 - 6710

International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization

Volume 3, Special Issue 4, March 2014

National Conference on Recent Advances in Civil Engineering (NCRACE-2013)

During 15-16 November, 2013
Organized by
Department of Civil Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Load sharing characteristics of piled raft

foundation in clay soil
Ningombam Thoiba Singh1, Baleshwar Singh2
PhD Scholar, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Indian institute of Technology, Guwahati, India1
Associate professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Indian institute of Technology, Guwahati, India2
Abstract In an elastic analysis of piled raft
foundation in clay soils, the load sharing behaviour of
piles and raft has been studied by varying soil
modulus, pile spacing, pile length and raft thickness.
Increase in raft thickness has no significant effect on
load sharing in soft soil. Unit skin friction developed
along the pile length increases with depth as well as
pile spacing.
Keywords Piled raft, soil modelling, load sharing,
relative stiffness, soil interaction, unit skin friction.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays in urban areas, people are more
concentrating on building expansion vertically in place
of horizontal expansion due to higher cost of land,
limited space & scarcity of land. Use of raft foundation is
being increasingly used for multi-storied buildings, with
or without basement, in subsoil conditions such as thick
clay deposits even with a high water table. If the clay
shear strength is very low, long load-bearing piles are
introduced to transfer the entire load to deeper and stiffer
soil layers. Even if the clay shear strength is adequate for
giving the required bearing capacity of a raft foundation,
the settlement may be very large. For such situations,
where it becomes necessary to reduce settlements, a piled
raft foundation can be opted for. The total and
differential settlements can be minimized by providing
the piles at specific locations under the raft.
Various methods for the analysis of piled raft
foundations have been described by several authors,
including Randolph (1994), Chow et al. (2001), Poulos
(2001), Small and Zhang (2002), Reul (2004), and
Maharaj & Gandhi (2004).
Copyright to IJIRSET

II. MODELING OF PILED RAFT

Modeling of piled raft was carried out considering the
soil, pile and raft as 8-noded brick elements solid 185,
and volume meshing of the top raft as 1x1x0.6 units,
piles as 0.4x0.4x1 units and surround soil as 1x1x1 units.
The degree of tolerance and merged distance of the
meshing was set to 0.01. Regarding boundary condition,
YZ plane is allowed to move in all the direction except
UX, YX plane is also allowed to move in all the
direction except UY and XY plane at the bottom of the
model is fixed as shown in Fig.1.1. Finally a varying
pressure load of 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 kPa was
applied on the top of raft.
Analysis and design of piled raft foundations and its
interaction effects is a complex solution and this
complex behaviour can be solved using the FEM
numerical software. The results present in this paper was
carried out in ANSYS which provide approximate
acceptable solution and involves complex material
properties, boundary conditions, irregular geometry of
the complete model etc.
The present analysis is carried out in a single pile
with different pile spacing (S), length (L) assuming
variation of soil modulus as given in Table 1. The
Poissons ratio of soil and concrete is taken as 0.45 and
0.15 respectively. Both the pile and raft will be
represented by the concrete and the surround medium of
pile and below the raft is modeled as soil.

www.ijirset.com

42

ISSN (Online) : 2319 - 8753

ISSN (Print) : 2347 - 6710

International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization

Volume 3, Special Issue 4, March 2014

National Conference on Recent Advances in Civil Engineering (NCRACE-2013)

During 15-16 November, 2013
Organized by
Department of Civil Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Table 1. Parameters of piled raft foundation

Figs. 2(a-e) show the variations of axial load

distribution along the pile length. and maximum at few
depths from the top of pile and proportionately decrease
with increase of pile depth.
The minimum load shared of the pile occurs at the
bottom of the pile and 60 to 70% of the total applied
pressure load is being shared to the pile in case of soft
soil whereas 30 to 40% of the total applied load in case
of hard soil. It is because of the raft takes the initial load
and dispersed to the hard soil instantly before
transferring to the pile. Further increase of loading
intensity, the raft & soil cannot bear the increased load
and the remaining load will be transferred to the soil
through pile. There is proportionate increase in axial load
with increase in depth of the pile.

Fig. 2(a) Variation of axial force in pile, L/d = 10

Fig. 1 Discrete model of a piled raft
For idealization of the model, it is assumed that a 4x4
m2 raft of 1.2 m thickness with a centrally located square
pile of 0.4x0.4 m2 upto a depth of 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 m
respectively was considered and a uniformly distributed
pressure load of 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 kPa was
applied on the top of the pile raft as shown in Fig. 1.
III. RESULTS & DISCUSSION
A. Axial Load Distribution
Five different cases of pile length such as 4, 6, 8, 10
and 12 m and pile spacing of square dimension whose
L/d and S/d values are given in the Table 1.
Fig. 2(b) Variation of axial force in pile, L/d = 15
Copyright to IJIRSET

www.ijirset.com

43

ISSN (Online) : 2319 - 8753

ISSN (Print) : 2347 - 6710

International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization

Volume 3, Special Issue 4, March 2014

National Conference on Recent Advances in Civil Engineering (NCRACE-2013)

During 15-16 November, 2013
Organized by
Department of Civil Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Fig. 2(c) Variation of axial force in pile, L/d = 20

Fig. 2(e) Variation of axial force in pile, L/d= 30

B. Load Sharing of Pile and Raft
Influence of Raft Thickness: Load sharing between
the raft & pile for different raft thickness and pile
spacing are indicated in Fig. 3. The percentage of load
shared by the raft decreases with increase of raft
thickness and thinner the raft share more load than the
thicker raft due to bending action which is not significant
in case of thicker in raft. Further, it is also seen that
thicker in raft does not have any significant advantage on
load sharing as a whole. On the basis of the above result,
further analysis of the piled raft, a constant value of ratio
of raft thickness (T) to diameter of pile (d) is kept
constant at 3 (three) in all cases.

Fig. 2(d) Variation of axial force in pile, L/d = 25

Fig. 3 Effect of raft thickness and pile spacing

Copyright to IJIRSET

www.ijirset.com

44

ISSN (Online) : 2319 - 8753

ISSN (Print) : 2347 - 6710

International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization

Volume 3, Special Issue 4, March 2014

National Conference on Recent Advances in Civil Engineering (NCRACE-2013)

During 15-16 November, 2013
Organized by
Department of Civil Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Influence
of Pile Length and Spacing: While
observing the result as shown in Fig. 4, the effect of pile
length and spacing under the constant pressure load of
250 kN/m2 may be summerised as increase in pile length,
smaller the pile spacing (S) does not show any
improvement in the percentage of load carried by the
pile. It is because of no relative motion between the pile
and surrounding soil. It means that they are moving as a
single unit and the pressure bulb of each pile falls one
above the other and interference to each other resulting
the piles are not fully utilised. It seems that whatever
load comes from the superstructure, 90% to 98% of the
load is possibly transferred to the piles. Even with
increase in pile length, there is not showing any
significant improvement of load taken by raft or soil.
Whereas, increase in pile length with larger in pile
spacing (S), shows improvement in the percentage (100 x
Ppile/Ptotal) of load carried by the pile. It is because of
complete utilization of a pile behaviour such as bearing
due to skin friction. Thus, the load transfer from the
superstructure are being more taken care by the longer
piles due to skin friction than the shorter pile and the
percentage of load transferred to the pile also decreases.

i.e decrease in soil modulus increases in load sharing

value to piles.

Fig. 5 Effect of modulus and pile spacing to pile load

Stiffer the soil (i.e Ec/Es value decreases), there is
lesser in load sharing to pile. This is because of load
transfer mechanism in to the soil and maximum of the
load coming from the superstructure is getting
transferred to the deeper soil through contact surface of
pile, i.e. skin friction. Thus, in soft soil, whatever load
comes to the raft is taking care by the pile through skin
friction and alternatively, if the soil is hard soil, whatever
load comes to the raft is taking care by the underneath
raft soil, thus minimum effect in the pile.
C. Development of Unit Skin Friction
The unit skin friction is developed around the
circumference of the pile along the pile length. Fig. 5
shows the development of unit skin friction for different
pile spacing. With increase of pile spacing, mobilization
of skin friction along the pile length is increased and
lesser the pile spacing there is proportionally decrease in
development of unit of skin friction along the pile length.

Fig. 4. Effect of pile length and spacing to pile load

It is also observed that increase in pile spacing,
percentage of load shared to piles decreases.
Influence of Soil Modulus: Fig. 5 shows the effect of
soil modulus and pile spacing on load shared by the pile.
Further observing the plot, it can be stated that load
shared by pile inversely proportional to the soil modulus
Copyright to IJIRSET

www.ijirset.com

45

ISSN (Online) : 2319 - 8753

ISSN (Print) : 2347 - 6710

International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization

Volume 3, Special Issue 4, March 2014

National Conference on Recent Advances in Civil Engineering (NCRACE-2013)

During 15-16 November, 2013
Organized by
Department of Civil Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Fig. 6 Effect of pile spacing and skin friction

It shows that a fully developed unit skin friction of a
pile in piled raft foundation can only be achieved when
the piles are placed at larger spacing. Further examined
that development of unit skin friction along the pile is
found very less on the top portion of the piles as the soil
just below the raft is taking initial load. After fully
mobilized, the load is being transfer to the bottom of the
soil through skin friction there by amount of unit skin
friction increases.

raft. Whereas, for longer pile, unit skin friction will reach
latter after fully mobilization of raft first and the load
will be dispersed to pile.
IV. CONCLUSION
Load sharing behaviour of pile and raft is found to
vary according to the stiffness of soil considering the
stiffness of the raft and pile at constant. Stiffer the soil,
lesser in load sharing and softer the soil, more in load
shared by the pile. There is not much significant effect of
increase in raft thickness in case of soft soil beyond
which they are almost similar characteristic. However,
unit skin friction plays a very important role on load
sharing between piles and raft in piled raft foundation.
Above all, there is significant effect of pile spacing for
every analysis result thereby advised to keep the pile in
larger spacing than the smaller spacing.
REFERENCES
[1] Chow, Y.K., Yong, K.Y. and Shen, W.Y. (2001), Analysis of
piled raft foundations using variational approach, International
Journal of Geomechanics,
1(2), 129-147.

[2] Poulos, H.G. (2001), Piled raft foundation: design and

applications, Geotechnique, 51(2), 95-113.

[3] Small, J.C. and Zhang, H.H. (2002). Behavior of piled raft
foundation under lateral and vertical loading, International Journal of
Geomechanics, 2(1), 2945.

[4] Reul, O. (2004). Numerical study of the bearing behavior of piled

rafts, International Journal of Geomechanics, ASCE, 4(2), 59-68.

[5] Maharaj DK & Gandhi SR (2004), Non-linear finite element

analysis of piled-raft foundations, Proc. of ICE Geotechnical
Engineering 157, Issue GE3, 107-113.

Fig. 7 Development of skin friction for different pile

lengths
Fig. 6 above shows the effect of pile length on
development of skin friction along the pile length. It
show that development of skin friction is higher in case
of shorter pile, because the total load applied to the pile
raft reaches its maximum value by pile instantly than the
Copyright to IJIRSET

www.ijirset.com

46