Piled Raft on Sandy Soil - An Observational Study

The increasing recognition of the combined piled raft foundation system is mainly due to the economics and the savings that can be achieved in the foundation design without compromising the safety and serviceability requirements. While detailed investigations through field monitoring of the piled raft supporting several tall and heavily loaded structures have been reported (Hooper, 1974; Cooke et al., 1981; Poulos, 2008; Yamashita, 2012), it appears, not so many case histories exist on the applicability of piled raft in the case of moderately loaded structures. The present study is related to the monitoring of the piled raft supporting a 12 storied apartment building and the results have been subjected to validation through numerical analyses. The results have been compared with the published results for a similar structure. As a practical problem, the study also discusses the effect of a compressible layer sandwiched between two competent layers obtained from an analytical study.