Comparison Between Theoretical and Practical Compression Capacities of Deep/Long Piles in Dubai

The rate of build high-rise buildings has accelerated rapidly over the last few decades, due to rapid urbanization and significant improvements in the field of the high-rise construction and technology. Many challenges were faced by the engineers in the design and construction of such buildings. One of the major challenges was the foundation systems, which are required to ensure the stability of the buildings. The common type of foundation system which is used in case of high-rise buildings is piles foundation system. Furthermore, in the most standards and codes of practice such as British Standard, the piles specifications and recommendations are stated for short piles which has a maximum depth range between 18.0 and 20.0 m. As well as, the theoretical equations for pile design, charts and different soil factors and parameters are based on old studies of short piles behavior. In this research, a comparison was conducted between the theoretical pile compression capacity which is calculated from the theoretical equations and the practical pile compression capacity which is derived from the results of pile’s static load test. The study covered three different cases of bored piles constructed in U.A.E. especially in Dubai. The piles used in this research have a depth ranging from 30.0 to 65.0 m. This type of piles is classified in this research as long or deep piles. A finite element model of each participated pile modeled by using PLAXIS 2D software, to judge between the practical and theoretical piles capacities. It was found that the theoretical compression pile capacity is 60–70% of the practical pile capacity with the same specifications (pile diameter and pile depth). As a conclusion of the results, the estimated piles diameter and depth in the concept design stage can be improved based on the results of this research.