Termination Criteria for Jacked Pile Construction and Load Transfer in Weathered Soils

Pile jacking is a piling technique that provides a noise- and vibration-free environment in the construction site. To improve termination criteria for pile jacking and to better understand the behavior of jacked piles, two steel H piles were instrumented, installed at a weathered soil site, and load tested. A set of termination criteria was applied to the test piles, which includes a minimum blow count from the standard penetration test, a specified final jacking force, a minimum of four loading cycles at the final jack force, and a specified maximum rate of pile settlement at the final jacking force. The two test piles passed all required acceptance criteria. Punching shear failure occurred at the failure load for both piles and the shaft resistance consisted of approximately 80% of the pile capacity. Based on the results of field tests in Hong Kong and Guangdong and several centrifuge tests, a relation between the ratio of the pile capacity Pult to the final jacking force PJ and the pile slenderness ratio is established. The Pult/PJ ratio is larger than 1.0 for long piles but may be smaller than 1.0 for short piles. A regression equation is established to determine the final jacking force, which is suggested as a termination criterion for jacked piles. The final jacking force can be smaller than 2.5 times the design load for very long piles, but should be larger than 2.5 times the design load for piles shorter than 37 times the pile diameter.