Geotechnical Engineering Circular No. 9 Design, Analysis, and Testing of Laterally Loaded Deep Foundations that Support Transportation Facilities
PUBLICATION OF LATERAL LOAD TESTS RESULTS
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| 12.6 PUBLICATION OF LATERAL LOAD TESTS RESULTS The analysis and design or laterally loaded deep foundations is an evolving area of practice, especially within the LRFD design framework. Recent advances in the state of the practice include development of additional p-y curves for local and regional materials as well as development of LRFD resistance factors. When lateral load tests are performed for transportation projects, there could be a potential benefit to the local practice as well as the industry as a whole by making the results publicly available. Having high quality lateral load and deformation data, along with subsurface information, publicly available would enable other practitioners and researchers to benefit from the testing without having to incur the significant cost of implementing a test program. Even if designers for other projects must perform their own data reduction and analysis of the test data, the savings in time and cost of being able to use local or regional test results without incurring the time and cost of performing a test program could be significant fora smaller project. Test reports could be published online on individual DOT websites or incorporated into larger industry databases. For example, a database of full scale lateral load tests, FindAPile.Com, is available online The database is a collaborative effort between University of California, Irvine, the Deep Foundation Institutes (DFI) Seismic and Lateral Loads Committee, DFI’s Drilled Shaft Committee, and the International Association of Foundation Drilling (ADSC). At the time of writing of this manual, the website contained records of over 30 lateral load tests on reinforced concrete and steel piles and drilled shafts performed over a period of 30 years from sites around the world. The amount of detail and available information for each project on the website varies however, the industry recognizes the value and potential benefit of sharing such test data. There maybe additional local or regional databases of lateral load tests as well. To address concerns regarding the use of test data interpretation by designers for other projects, the load test reports can be broken into a data report (presenting factual data such as subsurface conditions and instrumentation data) and interpretive report (data analyses, assessment and development of p-y curves, etc. In some cases, this may already be done if the testing is performed by one entity (a foundation testing specialist) and the interpretations and analyses performed by another entity (the designer of record. In this approach, the data report can be published for use by others, while the interpretive report remains a project document. Download 6.03 Mb. Share with your friends:
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