INVESTIGATION OF DESIGN ALTERNATIVES FOR

A PILED RAFT CASE HISTORY

By R. P. Cunha,1 H. G. Poulos,2 and J. C. Small3

ABSTRACT: This paper extends the design philosophy for piled rafts by exploring the factors that control the
design of a published case history where the piled raft was instrumented. The case history studied differs from
most published case histories in that concentrated column loads, rather than average ‘‘spread’’ loads, were
considered in the foundation design. An extensive series of backanalyses was initially carried out with this case
history, in order to calibrate the numerical program adopted herein. These analyses were followed by a parametric
analysis for the evaluation of different design alternatives. These alternatives adopted distinctive pile character-
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istics (number, location, and length), which were varied for different raft thicknesses, yielding 26 different cases
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for cross comparison and comparison with the ‘‘reference’’ case history. Each of the solutions was also assessed
in terms of relative costs against the reference case, allowing the establishment of conclusions of practical interest
for those involved in the design of piled raft structures.

INTRODUCTION
Conventional pile groups are commonly designed by adopt-
ing a relatively high factor of safety for the piles. These piles
are placed in such a manner that they will sustain the entire
design load of the superstructure. Although the connection
‘‘cap’’ (often a raft) is in close contact with the soil, its con-
J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.
history (Yamashita et al. 1994) in which the final raft defor-
mations and pile loads were known. Hence, a ‘‘Class C’’ back-
analysis is initially carried out to calibrate the numerical tool
adopted herein, furnishing ‘‘reference’’ initial values of contact
pressures, displacements, pile loads, and factors of safety for
comparison with the behavior computed from other design al-

tribution to the total bearing capacity and general pile group
behavior is seldom considered.
Nevertheless, in the past decade several papers have been
published with emphasis on what are now called ‘‘piled-rafts,’’
i.e., pile groups in which the raft connecting the pile heads
(positively) contributes to the overall foundation behavior
(Poulos 1998; Ta and Small 1996; Horikoshi and Randolph
1997; Mandolini and Viggiani 1997; Sinha and Poulos 1997;
Cunha and Sales 1998; Cunha et al. 2000a,b). The Interna-
tional Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering
(ISSMFE) also focused the activities of one of its technical
committees on the study of piled raft cases, gathering valuable
information on methods of analysis that is summarized in
O’Neill et al. (1996) and Van Impe and Lungu (1996).
On the other hand, the majority of the aforementioned pa-
pers have considered evenly distributed superstructure loads
rather than column loads acting on the piled rafts. The latter
load type is more commonly found in practice, especially for
typical urban structures. Hence, there is still a lack of under-
standing of the behavior of piled rafts under concentrated load-
ing conditions, as well as of the influence of several design
variables on the piled raft performance.
This paper explores the design of piled rafts, outlining the
influence of the major external variables that affect their design
under concentrated column loads. There are several external
variables that influence the design, but the most important ones
are those related to the pile characteristics (number, length,
and disposition), raft characteristics (thickness), and the foun-
dation’s overall cost. These variables are incorporated into a
parametric analysis performed with the basic data (soil con-
ditions, load pattern, etc.) from an existing instrumented case
1
Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Univ. of Brası́lia,
70910-900, Brası́lia/DF, Brazil.
2
Prof., Dept. of Civ. Engrg., Univ. of Sydney, NSW 2006, Sydney,
Australia.
3
Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Civ. Engrg., Univ. of Sydney, NSW 2006, Syd-
ney, Australia.
Note. Discussion open until January 1, 2002. To extend the closing
date one month, a written request must be filed with the ASCE Manager
of Journals. The manuscript for this paper was submitted for review and
possible publication on April 19, 2000; revised March 12, 2001. This
paper is part of the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental
Engineering, Vol. 127, No. 8, August, 2001. 䉷ASCE, ISSN 1090-0241/
01/0008-0635–0641/$8.00 ⫹ $.50 per page. Paper No. 22359.
JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING / AUGUST 2001 / 635
ternatives. The reference design solution and the parametric
alternatives are also compared in terms of relative costs, yield-
ing conclusions of practical interest to those currently involved
with the design of both conventional deep foundations and
piled rafts.
ADOPTED CASE HISTORY
The case history adopted for the present series of back-
analyses and parametric analyses is that described by Yama-
shita et al. (1994), and later examined further by Yamashita et
al. (1998). These authors described the design of a raft foun-
dation on a stiff clay deposit, which was constructed to support
a standard five-story residential building in one of the suburbs
of Tokyo. The 23 ⫻ 24 m rectangular raft was instrumented
with earth and pore pressure cells, while some of the piles
were also instrumented. Leveling points were also installed
completely around the raft.
The main characteristics of this case history and its design
are given as follows:
• A design proposal was made to use ‘‘settlement reducing’’
piles (Burland et al. 1977) to reduce both total and dif-
ferential settlements. They adopted composite 16 m bored
piles of 0.8 m in diameter, placed at each of the 20 col-
umn positions. These piles were founded in a 3-m-thick
medium-to-dense sand stratum, behaving as end bearing
piles with an individual capacity of 2,850 kN.
• The pile loads and the raft settlements were carefully mea-
sured during the building construction, providing an abun-
dance of data that were used by Yamashita et al. (1994)
in a Class C prediction. The pile loads were measured
when the 12 strain-gauged piles were cast in situ, while
the settlements were measured with an optical level after
the raft was cast. At the time of completion of the build-
ing, the maximum settlements had reached values as high
as 20 mm, whereas the total pile load carried by the piles
was on the order of 50% of the design superstructure load.
A similar Class C prediction was carried out by the present
authors with Yamashita et al.’s experimental data. A hybrid
finite and boundary element program was adopted, employing
similar (but slightly different) geotechnical parameters to those
of Yamashita et al. (1994). The general characteristics of the
 numerical tool employed here, and the adopted parameters, are
discussed next.
NUMERICAL TOOLS
The Geotechnical Analysis of Raft with Piles program
(GARP6) (Poulos and Small 1998) was adopted to evaluate
the behavior of the reference rectangular piled raft subjected
to vertical loading. This program is based on a simplified form
of boundary element program in which the raft is represented
as a linear elastic plate and the soil can be modeled either as
an elastic-layered continuum or as a Winkler spring medium.
The piles are represented by elastic-plastic springs that can
interact with each other and the raft. Limiting values of contact
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pressure (beneath the raft) and pile capacity (shaft friction plus
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tip end bearing) can also be specified, and the raft is analyzed
using the finite-element technique, rather than via finite dif-
ferences.
GARP6 also considers ‘‘interaction factors’’ between the
springs that represent the piles. Such factors are computed via
the use of another well-established software program, DEFPIG
(Deformation Analysis of Pile Groups) (Poulos 1990). It was
originally written for piles designed using the ‘‘conventional
approach,’’ by considering a group of identical elastic piles
having axial and lateral stiffness that are constant with depth.
It also allows for the eventual slippage between the piles and
J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.
the surrounding soil, and it can take into account the effects
of soil nonhomogeneity along the length of the pile. The stress
distributions are computed from the theory of elasticity, more
specifically, from Mindlin’s (1936) solutions for an isotropic,
homogeneous, linear elastic medium. The general character-
istics of all numerical analyses carried out herein (backanal-
yses and parametric studies) are given below:
• Pile characteristics: The elastic pile stiffness was consid-
ered as constant during GARP6 (linear elastic) analyses,
and was obtained via DEFPIG analyses with the given
pile length, diameter, and structural Young’s modulus. All
DEFPIG and GARP6 analyses considered an average
Poisson’s ratio of 0.3 for the layered soil, and distinct
values of Young’s modulus for each layer.
• Raft characteristics: The Young’s modulus of the raft was
assumed to be 25,000 MPa and its Poisson’s ratio was
taken as 0.2. A constant raft thickness of 0.3 m was used
for the backanalyses, also with values of 0.6 and 1.2 m
in the parametric analyses. The latter (1.2 m) value turns
the raft from a ‘‘fully’’ flexible slab to a slab of inter-
mediate flexibility, according to the definition of stiffness
given by Fraser and Wardle (1976). The base of the raft
was in full contact with the underlying soil.
• Column loads on raft: The same loads as presented by
Yamashita et al. (1994) were used.
• Interaction factors: These were obtained via the DEFPIG
analysis, and used within GARP6 for pile/pile and pile/
raft settlement interactions. These interactions were lim-
ited to a horizontal spacing equal to the length of the pile
adopted in each particular case. In the case of piles with
dissimilar lengths (in some of the parametric analyses) the
simplified procedure put forward by Hewitt (1988) was
adopted in order to derive the interaction factors. As an
example, Table 1 presents typical values of the interaction
factors for one of the parametric analyses.
• Raft/raft and raft/pile interactions: These were obtained
via the Boussinesq elastic equations by adopting an elastic
continuum model.
• Soil underneath raft: The soil deformations were limited
to a total depth of 40 m, where a hard silt layer is located.
A constant drained Young’s modulus was considered for
each clay and sand layer, being derived from (low strain)
636 / JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING / AUGUST 2001
TABLE 1. Typical Interaction Factors
Pile spacing/diameter Interaction factor
1 0.410
2 0.321
3 0.268
5 0.200
7 0.157
10 0.113
15 0.068
20 0.042
shear wave measurements similarly as presented by Ya-
mashita et al. (1994).
• Water level: This was assumed to be 5.0 m below the
ground surface.
• Bearing capacity of pile: The estimated drained capacity
was 3,000 kN for the 16-m-long piles and 1,800 kN for
the 8-m-long piles used in some of the parametric anal-
yses.
• Bearing capacity of raft: The estimated drained capacity
of the isolated raft was 2,500 kN.
• Pile and raft finite mesh assemblage: A nonsymmetrical
mesh (because of the number of piles and their location)
was adopted, with 290 raft elements used in each of the
cases.
BACKANALYSES
Adopting the same raft dimensions and pile monitoring po-
sitions (horizontal lines A–D and vertical lines 1–5 in Fig. 3)
as those presented by Yamashita et al. (1994), a Class C back-
analysis of the referenced design was carried out and is sum-
marized here.
The given column loads were slightly modified in order to
directly compare the experimental and computed settlements.
This was done because the experimental settlements were ob-
tained after the raft was cast in situ, i.e., they do not account
for the initial settlement of the raft due to its own weight.
These loads included the raft weight, which then had to be
subtracted from the total load (adopting ‘‘influence’’ areas un-
der each column load) to produce the ‘‘net’’ load that was used
within GARP6 backanalyses. On the other hand, the possibil-
ity of load transfer along the sides of the foundation beam was
not considered here, given the lack of information on the ge-
ometrical and construction details of this raft. This seems to
be an important aspect, since it led to lower loads at the pe-
ripheral piles in Yamashita et al.’s analyses, hence closer val-
ues of computed and measured loads.
The Young’s modulus of the soil (Es) was varied from 0.1
to 0.3 of the maximum (low strain Emax) value, which was
determined from the given shear wave velocities at the site.
Fig. 1 presents a comparison between measured and com-
puted settlements, while Fig. 2 presents a similar comparison
in terms of pile loads. This was done for all 12 instrumented
piles, and the following observations can be given:
• As with the Yamashita et al. (1994) backanalyses, the case
with Es = 0.2Emax seems to be the one that gives the better
agreement between measured and predicted values.
• The analyses were quite sensitive to the adopted Es values,
suggesting that the input soil variables can greatly influ-
ence the accuracy of the numerical analysis.
• The peripheral piles had computed loads well above the
measured values, because of load transfer at the edges as
explained before.
The case in which Es = 0.2Emax was adopted herein as the
reference design solution, for further comparison with the al-
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J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.

FIG. 1. Backanalysis: Comparison of Settlements FIG. 2. Backanalysis: Comparison of Pile Loads

ternate designs. It gave the better agreement between measured

and computed results for this initial prediction, and also fur-
nished good values of maximum pile displacements, loads, raft
inclinations, contact pressures, and factors of safety. Fig. 3
presents the contours of vertical displacement along the raft
for this design, together with the adopted finite-element mesh
of the raft and Yamashita et al.’s monitoring positions.
It can be noted in this figure that the points that underwent
the higher settlements underneath the raft are those associated
with the column load positions (dots in the finite-element
mesh). These 20 column positions dictated the location of the
piles in the design by Yamashita et al. (1994). Thus, the ref-
erence case contains one 16-m-length pile underneath each of
the existing column load positions. This figure also depicts a
concentration of settlements for the central piles. This behavior
was associated with the relatively small thickness of the raft,
i.e., the 0.3 m thickness led to the raft being flexible when
FIG. 3. Raft Details and Contours of Vertical Displacement
compared with the stiffness of the piles, hence, most of the
column loads were absorbed by the piles.
• Raft thickness: The reference value was 0.3 m, with raft
PARAMETRIC ANALYSES thicknesses of 0.6 and 1.2 m.
• Number of piles: The reference case involved 20 piles.
The predicted reference values were compared with equiv-
Other cases considered were that of 10 piles (one pile
alent results from various design alternatives. These alterna-
under each column carrying a net load above 2.5 MN),
tives were simulated by carrying out a parametric analysis with
six piles (centrally located in the area of higher column
this same problem, i.e., by keeping some of the external var-
loads), and 0 piles (raft only).
iables constant (e.g., the column load and the soil conditions)
• Pile/raft configuration: The configuration was related to
while varying the others (number, disposition/length of the
the number of piles and their length, as indicated before.
piles, and the raft thickness).
Eight distinct configurations were used, as depicted in Fig.
The parametric analyses adopted the following variations:
4 by letters A–E.
• Pile length: The original length of 16 m was the reference
value while shorter 8-m-length piles were also analyzed. Therefore, 26 distinct parametric design alternatives were
JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING / AUGUST 2001 / 637
 2.4-m excavation, and all material costs (grout, reinforced
bars, etc.). It also assumed that the piles were to be excavated
by using continuous flight auger equipment. No price provi-
sion was made for the support of the excavation.

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
All the parametric results were plotted against the raft thick-
ness, as presented in Figs. 5–8. Fig. 5 presents the results for
maximum settlement, maximum differential settlement, and
minimum inclination parameter n (1/n is the inclination ratio,
or angular distortion, i.e., the differential displacement divided
by the distance between the settlement points). These values
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are the ‘‘critical’’ values for each of the cases, and may not
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refer to the same position underneath the raft in each condi-

tion, i.e., the position in which the maximum displacement was
observed in one particular case may not be the same for an-
other case. All of the investigated points were directly located
underneath the building columns. The following observations
can be drawn:

• By increasing the raft thickness (t) there is a tendency for

both the maximum displacements and the maximum dif-
ferential displacements to decrease. There is also a ten-
dency to increase the inclination parameter n (thus de-
J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.

creasing the ratio 1/n).

• For each raft thickness, by decreasing the number of piles
(from the most ‘‘piled’’ 20P-16 m(A1) case to the Raft
Only case), there is a tendency to increase both the max-
imum displacements and the maximum differential dis-
placements. An exception is the case of t = 1.2 m, where
the maximum displacement is almost constant and the

FIG. 4. Adopted Piled Raft Configurations

cross compared and analyzed against the values of the refer-

ence design solution of the previous item (which represents
Yamashita et al.’s case history). A nomenclature was devised
in order to plot the results for each of these cases, following
the code ‘‘**P-## m(config),’’ where the initial asterisks rep-
resent the number of piles, the following hatches denote the
pile length(s), and ‘‘config’’ denotes the piled raft configura-
tion. This nomenclature has been slightly changed for config-
urations D and E, by respectively adopting the codes ‘‘20P-8/
16m(D)’’ and ‘‘20P-8/16m(E).’’ The case with no piles was
denoted as ‘‘Raft Only,’’ and the reference case refers to the
alternative 20P-16m(A1) when the raft thickness is 0.3 m.
A comprehensive cost analysis was additionally carried out
with the design data (geometry of the raft/piles, soil charac-
teristics, etc.) in order to evaluate the relative costs of all al-
ternate designs, with respect to the reference cost. This anal-
ysis was done by an Australian foundation contractor, and
included the pile and raft construction, the backfilling behind FIG. 5. Displacement, Differential Displacement, and Inclination An-
the raft, the survey of the piles, any spoil removal due to the gle

638 / JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING / AUGUST 2001

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J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.

FIG. 7. Pile Load Sharing and Factor of Safety

FIG. 6. Pile Load, Contact Pressure, and Average Contact Pressure

maximum differential displacement slightly decreases and

stays constant with the decrease of the number of piles.
This occurs because of the higher stiffness of the raft in
this condition, which tends to reduce and even suppress
any variation in settlement among the points underneath
the raft.

The reference design yielded a maximum settlement and a

differential settlement of 24 and 15 mm, respectively, with an
inclination ratio of 1/800. These values were considered ac-
ceptable by Yamashita et al. (1994), and will be used here as
‘‘benchmarks’’ for comparison purposes. Therefore, the fol-
lowing comments can be made based on the adopted raft thick-
nesses (t): FIG. 8. Relative Costs of All Design Alternatives

• t = 0.3 m: The unpiled case yielded a maximum displace-
ment and a maximum differential displacement that was
around two times the reference values, with an inclination
ratio of 1/400. These results are close to those presented
by Yamashita et al. (1994), and substantiate their conclu-
sion that the unpiled raft could not be accepted as a design
alternative. They reached this conclusion on the basis of
the computed maximum settlement (which was above 25
mm) and on the basis of the inclination ratio (which was
above 1/500). If such values are adopted as the limiting
design values, then Yamashita et al.’s design choice was
the right one for this particular raft thickness, since in
none of the other alternatives was the maximum settle-
ment below or equal to 25 mm. However, if the maximum
design settlement limit is slightly increased to 30 mm then
another design alternative can be accepted. This is the one
JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING / AUGUST 2001 / 639
denoted as 20P-8/16m(D), with 10 piles of 16 m and 10
of 8 m in length underneath the raft.
• t = 0.6 m: All the alternatives yielded satisfactory values
of the inclination parameter n (i.e., above 500), but only
a few of them yielded maximum settlements below 25
mm. By considering this value (i.e., 25 mm maximum
settlement, n > 500) as the design criteria, then only the
alternatives 20P-16m(A1) and 20P-8/16m(D) would be
acceptable. However, if the maximum design settlement
is increased to 30 mm, as before, then all the alternatives
for this raft thickness would be acceptable. The ‘‘opti-
mum’’ design would then be related to other aspects, such
as the overall cost, and so forth.
• t = 1.2 m: All the alternatives yielded satisfactory values
of both the inclination parameter n (above 500) and max-
imum settlement (below 25 mm). Hence, all the solutions
 could be, in principle, adopted in practice. Nevertheless,
the optimum design would also have to take into consid-
eration the cost aspect.
Fig. 6 presents the computed results for the maximum pile
loads, the maximum contact pressures, and the average contact
pressures. As before, these values are the critical values for
each of the cases, and again, do not necessarily refer to the
same position underneath the raft. The maximum contact pres-
sures were obtained by ‘‘filtering’’ the results for each of the
finite elements underneath the raft, and refer to the contact
pressure at the soil/raft interface. The following observations
can be drawn from this figure:
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• By increasing the raft thickness there is a tendency to
decrease both the maximum pile load and the maximum
contact pressure. The increase in raft thickness, however,
has little or no influence on the average pressure under-
neath the raft, although it influences the (maximum) lo-
calized values of contact pressures. By also taking account
of the results from Fig. 5 (displacement), one may con-
clude that the maximum pile load is directly proportional
to the maximum raft displacement.
• For each raft thickness, by reducing the number of piles,
there is a slight tendency for both the maximum and the
average contact pressures to increase. However, the values
J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.
of average contact pressure at the soil/raft interface are
well below the long-term drained capacity of the surface
clay, indicating that all the alternative solutions could be
accepted in practice.
• The maximum pile load, for a specific raft thickness, is
mainly dependent on both the number and length of the
piles in the raft.
• For all the cases (with the exception of one pile in the
10P-8m(B2) configuration, t = 0.3 m), the piles have not
reached their ultimate capacity. The maximum pile loads,
for each respective pile length, were well below the fail-
ure values. These values were also lower than the struc-
tural failure value of the composite pile, estimated to be
around 4,500 kN.
Fig. 7 presents the results of the pile load sharing and the
factors of safety. It is noted that the load carried by the piles
continuously decreases with an increase in raft thickness, vary-
ing from maximum values of about 60% for t = 0.3 m to
around 40% for t = 1.2 m. This means that by increasing the
raft thickness more load is absorbed by the raft. It is also
observed that the decrease of this load share is proportional to
the decrease of the number of piles in each of the configura-
tions (for a particular raft thickness). As expected, the lower
the number of piles for a particular raft thickness or configu-
ration, the lower will be the percentage of the load carried by
the piles.
However, the total capacity of the pile group (isolated with-
out raft) will also change by varying the number of piles in
each of the adopted configurations. Therefore, the overall ca-
pacity (pile group plus raft) will also change, since it is con-
sidered to be the lesser value of (1) the sum of the pile group
and the raft capacities; or (2) the piled raft ‘‘block’’ failure
mode capacity. The changing values of factor of safety from
this figure reflect the aforementioned variation of the geo-
technical capacity of the pile group, as well as the variation
of the overall (piles plus raft) geotechnical capacity of the
piled raft. Furthermore, there is not a clear trend for the var-
iation of the overall factor of safety with the increase in the
raft thickness, but by decreasing the number of piles in each
of the piled raft configurations (from 20P-16m(A1) to Raft
Only) there is a slight decrease in this latter factor. This ob-
servation is valid for all raft thicknesses studied herein.
640 / JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING / AUGUST 2001
Regardless of the previous comments, some of the piled raft
configurations are conservative, since some of them had fac-
tors of safety for the pile group above 3 and overall factors of
safety above 6. This result clearly indicates that the main pur-
pose of inclusion of the piles was to reduce the differential
and the total settlements, rather than to increase the capacity
of the foundation system.
All the design alternatives were also compared in terms of
their relative costs with respect to the reference design solu-
tion. In the reference case, a cost of unity was adopted, and
Fig. 8 presents the relative costs of all alternatives. This figure
shows that, for each raft thickness, decreasing the number of
piles (from the most piled 20P-16 m(A1) case to the Raft Only
case), decreases the associated cost of the foundation. More-
over, by increasing the raft thickness, there is a tendency to
increase the overall price of the design solution. For instance,
by increasing the raft thickness from 0.3 to 0.6 m, there will
be an increase of around 26% on the average cost of the 0.3-
m solutions.
The present exercise has demonstrated, so far, that distinct
design solutions can be adopted depending on the design lim-
itations and assumed tolerances. Hence, if it is assumed that
the maximum inclination ratio of any point of the raft must
be lower than 1/500, the maximum factor of safety of the
isolated pile group must be lower than 3, the minimum overall
safety factor must be higher than 3, and the relative cost must
be lower than or equal to 1, then few solutions will be accepted
depending on the adopted value for the maximum settlement
underneath the raft.
If all these criteria are met, and this maximum settlement is
limited to 25 mm, then only Yamashita et al.’s reference so-
lution could be adopted, i.e., only the piled raft solution with
the 0.3-m-thick raft on top of 20 piles of 16-m length. On the
other hand, if all of the criteria are met and it is assumed that
the maximum settlement could increase to 30 mm, then several
other solutions could be adopted, as presented in Table 2. This
table also indicates the relative cost of such alternatives and
the percentage of cost saving in relation to the reference case.
It is clearly noted that a higher cost saving may be obtained
depending on the adopted solution. In fact, the most econom-
ical solution in this case is a raft only, without any piles. Nev-
ertheless, it should be pointed out that, although all solutions
of Table 2 meet the predefined criteria, they yielded slightly
different results of settlement, pile load, raft pressure, and so
forth.
It is finally emphasized that all aforementioned comments
are valid only for the conditions analyzed herein, and may not
reflect the optimum design solutions under different soil con-
ditions, raft geometries, and/or load patterns. Moreover, the
presented costs are current, and may vary in the future.
Nevertheless, this exercise highlights the fact that, whenever
possible, several alternatives should be considered for the op-
timum design of a piled raft foundation under a particular set
of soil, load, and pile/superstructure conditions. Local stan-
dards and practice are also important for this ‘‘optimizing’’
design process, since they give the benchmarks and the lim-
iting criteria one should apply to filter the distinct alternatives.
TABLE 2. Costs of Cases That Satisfy All Criteria
Raft Percentage of
Design thickness Relative cost saving
alternative (m) cost (%)
20P-16m(A1)a 0.3 1.0 0
20P-8/16m(D) 0.3 0.93 7
10P-8m(B2) 0.6 0.96 4
6P-16m(C1) 0.6 0.97 3
Raft Only 0.6 0.76 24
a
Reference case.
 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has explored and extended the design philosophy
for piled raft foundations, by considering a series of design
analyses related to a published case history. This case was
considered because it involved discrete column loads, rather
than a uniformly distributed load, and is more representative
of real conditions in urban construction.
The design alternatives adopted pile characteristics (number,
location, and length) which were varied against the raft thick-
ness, yielding 26 different cases for cross comparison and con-
trast against the ‘‘reference’’ design described by Yamashita et
al. (1994). The reference case was fully instrumented, allowing
the settlement and load for some of the piles to be used to
No other uses without permission. Copyright (c) 2012. American Society of Civil Engineers. All rights reserved.
‘‘calibrate’’ the numerical program used herein. A variety of
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alternative design solutions were examined in order to study
which combinations of parameters led to designs that were less
expensive than the reference solution and also satisfied one
particular performance criteria.
The reference design adopted by Yamashita et al. (1994)
involves the use of a pile below each column location, in con-
junction with a thin raft. The present analyses have demon-
strated that this solution fully satisfied the design requirements.
However, they have also demonstrated that by assessing the
performance of various combinations of raft thickness and
number and length of piles, it may be possible to develop a
J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. 2001.127:635-641.
foundation design that also performs satisfactorily, and is
somewhat less expensive than the reference design.
Although the results are restricted to the conditions of the
analyses, they do highlight the fact that, whenever possible,
an ‘‘optimized’’ parametric procedure should be considered in
practice for the design of both piled rafts and standard deep
foundations. It allows some insight into the most relevant var-
iables that affect the behavior of the foundation, as well as the
establishment of the ‘‘optimum’’ design characteristics valid
for the particular soil, load, and superstructure conditions. Lo-
cal standards and practice also need to be considered through-
out the design process, since they can be used as the limiting
criteria upon which one can base the distinct alternatives.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was made possible through a joint technical cooperation
program from both the Universities of Sydney and Brası́lia. This program
has resulted in the first writer’s sabbatical leave at the former university.
Therefore, the first writer would like to express his gratitude to the Bra-
zilian Council for Research and Development-CNPq, for the scholarship
he received throughout his period in Australia.
The writers also acknowledge the fruitful discussions with some of
the staff members of the University of Sydney, in particular, Dr. Tim
Hull, Prof. John Carter, and Prof. S. Reid. Likewise, the aid provided by
J. Adamiec from Wagstaff Piling Inc., in calculating the foundation costs
is most appreciated.
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