Effects of pile geometry on bearing capacity of open-ended piles driven into sands

Bearing capacity of open-ended piles depends largely on inner frictional resistance, which is influenced by the degree of soil plugging. While a fully-plugged open-ended pile produces a bearing capacity similar to a closed-ended pile, fully coring (or unplugged) pile produces a much smaller bearing capacity. In general, open-ended piles are driven under partially-plugged mode. The formation of soil plug may depend on many factors, including wall thickness at the pile tip (or inner pile diameter), sleeve height of the thickened wall at the pile tip and relative density. In this paper, we studied the effects of wall thickness at the pile base and sleeve height of the thickened wall at the pile tip on bearing capacity using laboratory model tests. The tests were conducted on a medium dense sandy ground. The model piles with different tip thicknesses and sleeve heights of thickened wall at the pile tip were tested. The results were also discussed using the incremental filling ratio and plug length ratio, which are generally used to describe the degree of soil plugging. The results showed that the bearing capacity increases with tip thickness. The bearing capacity of piles of smaller sleeve length (e.g., <= 1D; D is pile outer diameter) was found to be dependent on the sleeve length, while it is independent on the sleeve length of greater than a 1D length. We also found that the soil plug height is dependent on wall thickness at the pile base. The results on the incremental filling ratio revealed that the thinner walled piles produce higher degree of soil plugging at greater penetration depths. The results also revealed that the soil plug height is dependent on sleeve length of up to 2D length and independent beyond a 2D length. The piles of a smaller sleeve length (e.g., <= 1D) produce higher degree of soil plugging at shallow penetration depths while the piles of a larger sleeve length (e.g., >= 2D) produce higher degree of soil plugging at greater penetration depths.