Dynamic Effect of Pile Installation in Sand on Nearby Structures

Driven piles have often been used in many civil structures to provide structural loading support. However, the unavoidable vibrations induced by pile driving processes may cause varying degrees of damage to adjacent structures. This thesis presents combinations of experimental and numerical studies to investigate the transmitted vibrations induced by impact of pile driving on vicinity structures. The experimental results indicate that the peak particle velocity for vibrations emitted with impact pile driving is increased with increasing the energy and the penetration depth of pile driving for all vicinity structures and it can be decreased without change in the driving energy by decreasing the weight of hammer and increasing the height of falling hammer. Vibration intensities are attenuated with increasing surface distance from the pile driving and the peak particle velocity decreased uniformly with surface distance from the pile driving for shallow and deep foundations. Also, the empirical relations, which were determined based on the scaled-distance concept, a suitable for shallow foundations rather than deep foundations.