U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Waterways Experiment Station

This was a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to evaluate methods to predict the capacity of drilled and grouted (D&G) piles. The use of underwater hammers in deep water is expensive and it may not be possible in water depths greater than 2,000 feet. This makes a driven pile foundation unattractive or not feasible. An alternative is to use drilled and grouted piles which can be placed by a drill ship. One problem associated with D&G piles is that their capacity can not be checked as easily as that of driven piles where the pile driving record is an indicator of pile capacity.

This was a Joint Industry Project (JIP) with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Waterways Experimental Station (WES) and Texas A&M University; to study parameter trends and phenomenological aspects of the moving soil sediment/pipe interaction problem. Research consisted of characterizing the viscous drag of soft soils on embedded pipelines. Equations were developed for soft soil. The soil pipeline interaction was validated with model experiments at Texas A&M University.

This was a joint Industry Project (JIP) to study the response of clay soils to the deflection of a pile with large, lateral cyclic loading and erosion of stiff clay due to repeated lateral loading. Studies involve an evaluation of the continuum mechanics and the finite element methods, and the P-Y method, in solving the problem of determining soil response for offshore structures. In-situ data and undisturbed samples for laboratory testing will be obtained from sites where major pile experiments were conducted.