CASE STUDY PILE RAFT FOR TOWER BLOCK UC 1510

Summary
Introduction
Pile raft is a combination of two foundation techniques i.e. it combines the bearing
effect of Pile + Raft foundation
Therefore its applied when the soil is loose and simply raft or pile is not feasible. The
bearing capacity is gained mainly by skin friction by piles and end bearing by raft.
Raft also decreases the overall settlement.
Case Analysis
The design of the raft assumed that the walls of two level basement car parks would
act with the raft over the piles to transmit the shear and bending forces to the outer
piles. The walls of the basement had almost full height opening, placed one above
the other, and contained only nominal reinforcement.
Original Design
The combined strength these walls plus the 1.5m thick slab was quite inadequate to
transmit the loads. The mistake was discovered whilst the tower block was being
constructed

Schematic Arrangement of New Raft

The remedial work required a new raft
to be constructed beneath the existing
one

CASE STUDY PILE RAFT FOR TOWER BLOCK UC 1510

Remedial Work
The remedial work could be summarised with the following figure (it was a
combination of the laid down factors) :

Placing of concrete for the lower

part of the new raft was carried
out conventionally.

Grouting was continuous until

the work was complete.

In order to achieve good bond

with the existing raft the upper
part the new raft was packed
with single sized aggregate and
then grouted with a retarded
and fluid cement paste.

Pipes were so placed to let the

air our in front of the grout
surface, then to indicate where
and when the grout had
arrived, and then to allow
grouting to continue from
immediately behind the
advancing wall of grout.

The grout was introduced

under pressure to the back of
the pour through a
complicated system of metal
pipes, pinned to the underside
of the existing raft
The method produced a wall of
grout that extended from top to
bottom of the pour and that
flowed forward towards the
peripheral shutters with the top
surface behind the bottom.