The design, construction and behaviour of the foundations of a cluster of circular steel tanks are reported. The tanks have diameters ranging from 10 m to 12 m and a height of 15 m; they are intended to store sodium hydroxide, a toxic liquid with a unit weight of 15.1 kN/m3. The subsoil consists of made ground overlying essentially cohesionless soils. Simple raft foundations would be sufficiently safe against a bearing capacity failure, but the predicted absolute and differential settlement have been judged not to be allowable in the present case. Accordingly, continuous flight auger bored piles have been adopted. If designed by the conventional approach, the piled foundation is rather expensive, requiring about 128 piles. On the contrary, the piles have been intended as settlement reducers, using only 52 piles while keeping settlement within acceptable limits. Two of the tanks have been instrumented to monitor settlement and load sharing between raft and piles. The paper reports the design analyses, based on a pile load test and carried out by the program NAPRA, and compares them with the experimental observations during the first filling of one of the tanks.

Piles as settlement reducers: a case history

DE SANCTIS, Luca
2004-01-01

Abstract

The design, construction and behaviour of the foundations of a cluster of circular steel tanks are reported. The tanks have diameters ranging from 10 m to 12 m and a height of 15 m; they are intended to store sodium hydroxide, a toxic liquid with a unit weight of 15.1 kN/m3. The subsoil consists of made ground overlying essentially cohesionless soils. Simple raft foundations would be sufficiently safe against a bearing capacity failure, but the predicted absolute and differential settlement have been judged not to be allowable in the present case. Accordingly, continuous flight auger bored piles have been adopted. If designed by the conventional approach, the piled foundation is rather expensive, requiring about 128 piles. On the contrary, the piles have been intended as settlement reducers, using only 52 piles while keeping settlement within acceptable limits. Two of the tanks have been instrumented to monitor settlement and load sharing between raft and piles. The paper reports the design analyses, based on a pile load test and carried out by the program NAPRA, and compares them with the experimental observations during the first filling of one of the tanks.
2004
07277-3264-1
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11367/20585
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