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Reliability-Based Serviceability Limit State Design of Driven Piles in Glacial Deposits

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Abstract

The reliability-based design (RBD) was investigated in this study on the serviceability limit state of steel piles driven in glacial deposits. A database of 42 high-quality pile load tests was used to quantify the uncertainties of the standard penetration test (SPT)—based design methods. A two-parameter hyperbolic model was adopted to represent the measured load–displacement response of a pile, and the load component of the model was normalized with the capacity identified from the pile load test. A statistical analysis was conducted on the performances of 11 different failure load identification methods. The De Beer method was selected due to its low variations and relatively conservative estimation. The measured capacities were compared to predictions from three SPT-based design methods. The statistical properties of the capacity bias, a ratio of the measured to predicted capacity, were evaluated for characterizing the uncertainties of a pile design in glacial deposits. The average of the capacity bias varied from 0.96 to 1.13 with the coefficient of variations ranging from 36.4 to 50.9%. From the pile load tests, probability distributions were fitted to the collected capacity biases and hyperbolic model parameters, and several copulas were evaluated to represent the observed correlations between the two hyperbolic parameters. Lastly, the resistance factors in the RBD were calibrated with Monte Carlo simulations. In the end, a series of resistance factors were developed for an allowable displacement of 5 to 25 mm for three SPT-based design methods. Based on this study, the values of the resistance factors ranged from 0.04 to 0.49, which were largely influenced by the design methods due to their capacity biases and variations.

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Acknowledgements

The presented research was made possible with funding from the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) and support through a graduate scholarship from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. In addition, the authors would like to thank Mr. David Staseff and Ms. Minkyung Kwak from MTO for sharing the data of pile load tests.

Funding

This research was funded by Ministry of Transportation Ontario Highway Infrastructure Innovations Funding Program grant entitled "Improving Pile Design in Ontario Soils."

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  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3, Canada

    Markus Jesswein & Jinyuan Liu

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  1. Markus Jesswein
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Correspondence to Jinyuan Liu.

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Jesswein, M., Liu, J. Reliability-Based Serviceability Limit State Design of Driven Piles in Glacial Deposits. Geotech Geol Eng 40, 4447–4471 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-022-02163-0

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