Soil Plugging Effect of Jacked Open-Ended Pile in Layered Foundation

This paper presents the effect of soil plugging of open-ended piles in layered foundation. Focus is placed on the formation process of the soil plug by using a series of experiments, in terms of the growth of soil plug and the degree of soil plugging, soil plug composition, incremental filling ratio (IFR), and plug length ratio (PLR). Besides, based on the field engineering, the linear relationship between the IFR and PLR was established. The research results indicated that the plug height increases with the larger pile inner diameter, and the formation time of the fully soil plug was prolonged with the increase in the pile diameter. Furthermore, the height and formation time of the soil plug eventually in the pipe pile will vary with the distribution of different foundations. The relationship curve between the IFR and PLR obtained by the experimental results was identical to the trend of actual engineering. Therefore, the research results have certain guiding significance for further determining the internal mechanism and development laws of the soil plugging effect in open-ended piles.