Bending moments in raft of a piled raft system using Winkler analysis

Bending moments in the raft of a pile raft system is affected by pile-pile interaction and pile-raft interaction, amongst other factors. Three-Dimensional finite element program has to be used to evaluate these bending moments. Winkler type analysis is easy to use but it however ignores these interactions. This paper proposes a very simplified and novel method for finding bending moments in raft of a piled raft based on Winkler type where raft is supported on bed of springs considering pile-pile and pile-raft interaction entitled as "Winkler model for piled raft (WMPR)" The pile and raft spring stiffness are based on load share between pile and raft and average pile raft settlement proposed by Randolph (1994). To verify the results of WMPR, raft bending moments are compared with those obtained from PLAXIS 3D software. A total of sixty analysis have Performed varying different parameters. It is found that raft bending moments obtained from WMPR closely match with bending moments obtained from PLAXIS 3D. A comparison of bending moments ignoring any interaction in Winkler model is also made with PLAXIS-3D, which results in large difference of bending moments. Finally, bending moment results from eight different methods are compared with WMPR for a case study. The WMPR, though, a simple method yielded comparable raft bending moments with the most accurate analysis.