Preliminary Geotechnical Design of Bridge Foundations - Engineering Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

A two-span road bridge is going to be constructed at the river crossing shown in Figure 1. The project is now at the tender design phase. The solution that the structural engineer is currently examining requires founding the two abutments and the pier of the bridge on pile foundations. Each abutment and the pier will be founded on four piles connected at their head with a rigid pile cap (see Figures 1 and 2). The elevation of the pile heads will be the same for all piles (+3.5m AHD), as shown in Figure 2.

You are part of the team of geotechnical engineers assigned with the task of the preliminary design of the foundation piles.

• you have been assigned the foundation of the pier P.

The available geotechnical information at this design stage comprises three exploratory boreholes BH1-BH3, the locations of which are shown in Figure 1. The borehole logs are provided in Figures 3 to 5 and include, apart from the description of the drilled soil formations, results of in situ SPT tests, laboratory characterisation tests on disturbed soil samples and unconfined compression tests performed on two samples retrieved from the bedrock sandstone formation.

The contractor that you are preparing the tender for has advised that wishes to use driven steel closed-ended pipe piles. The contractor also mentioned that their supplier can provide them with pipe piles of any (reasonable) diameter.

The tasks that you have to complete include:

• Provide the geotechnical model of the bridge. This includes identifying geotechnical units/layers and their thickness along the longitudinal section of the bridge A-A' shown in Figure 2, as well as estimates of the groundwater table based on the available data. Your geotechnical model must cover the whole bridge, and not just the foundation that you have been tasked to design.

• Determine the characteristic geotechnical parameters required to estimate the short term axial bearing capacity of all the piles of the bridge (not just the parameters required for the foundation that you have been tasked to design), for each one of the geotechnical units you identified.

• Determine the required pile diameter and length so that the piles of the abutment/pier that has been assigned to you satisfy the bearing capacity requirements against axial compressive loads for short-term conditions only. The total axial load acting on the pile caps of abutments A1 and A2 is 5.3MN and the total axial load acting on the pile cap of pier P is 8.6MN.

What you have to deliver:

• An executive summary reporting the pile length and diameter you determined (max 4 lines)

• A drawing with the geotechnical section A-A', depicting the geometry of the geotechnical units you identified and the groundwater conditions.

• A table with the description of your geotechnical units and the characteristic geotechnical parameters required for short-term bearing capacity calculations.

• A short note explaining how you determined these geotechnical parameters (max one page including figures, if you need to include any).

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