Effect of pile group geometry on bearing capacity of piled raft foundations

This is an experimental study to investigate the behaviour of piled raft system in different types of sandy soil. A small scale "prototype" model was tested in a sand box with load applied to the foundation through a compression jack and measured by means of load cell. The settlement was measured at the raft by means of dial gauges, three strain gauges were attached on piles to measure the strains and calculate the load carried by each pile in the group. Nine configurations of group ($1{\times}2$, $1{\times}3$, $1{\times}4$, $2{\times}2$, $2{\times}3$, $2{\times}4$, $3{\times}3$, $3{\times}4$ and $4{\times}4$) were tested in the laboratory as a free standing pile group (the raft not in contact with the soil) and as a piled raft (the raft in contact with the soil), in addition to tests for raft (unpiled) with different sizes. It is found that when the number of piles within the group is small (less than 4), there is no evident contribution of the raft to the load carrying capacity. The failure load for a piled raft consisting of 9 piles is approximately 100% greater than free standing pile group containing the same number of piles. This difference increases to about 4 times for 16 pile group. The piles work as settlement reducers effectively when the number of piles is greater than 6 than when the number of piles is less than 6. The settlement can be increased by about 8 times in ($1{\times}2$) free standing pile group compared to the piled raft of the same size. The effect of piled raft in reducing the settlement vanishes when the number of piles exceeds 6.