Experimental Study on Lateral and Vertical Capacity of Piled Raft and Pile Group System in Sandy Soil

In deep foundations, the pile group and the pile raft are generally used. To date, the contribution of the raft is not taken into account in the design, even when the raft is in contact with the soil and the whole system is therefore considered to work as a pile group foundation. In a combined pile raft system, the raft takes a considerable portion of the applied load, depending upon the number of piles, the spacing to diameter ratio of the piles, and the length to diameter ratio. In this paper, an experimental investigation is carried out to study the response of small-scale pile group and piled raft models with a varying number of piles subjected to both vertical and lateral loads. Additionally, the response mechanism of these models to both types of loads is also studied. A comparison was made between these models. It was found that, unlike the pile group, the piled raft provides considerably high stiffness to both types of loads, and the difference between the stiffness of both systems decreases as the number of piles increases. By comparing the response of the piled raft and the pile group with the same number of piles under the same vertical and lateral load, it was concluded that the piled raft response to the lateral and vertical loads was much stiffer than the pile group response. The lateral deflection and the vertical settlement of the piled raft were less than those of the pile group with the same pile configuration. This effective response of the piled raft to the vertical and lateral loads was due to the raft contribution in resisting the vertical and lateral loads. Moreover, with the increase in the number of piles, the vertical and lateral contribution of the raft decreases.