Author : Mahmood Rashid Mahmood and Shaimaa M. Abdulrahman

The pile driving is realized as the hammer strikes the pile head with a certain impact velocity. The vibration produced by one blow is not regular and generally they die away before the next blow. For some type of hammers, the vibrations are not completely dissipated before the next blow. The response of different forms of the construction will vary and certain structural details may lead to magnification of the vibration effect. In order to investigate the characteristics of vibration wave transmission within the soil due to driving precast concrete pile, experimental tests of small scale model of precast concrete pile of (20×20) mm and 500mm lengths was conducted in steel container of (1200 × 1200× 900) mm dimensions fill with sand to conduct the tests. Pile driving hammer device was fixed on the container to impact pile by dropping weights of 1.68kg falling from a constant height of 279 mm. The experimental work consists of (5) small scale model tests, the dynamic response of each model are recorded. The peak particle velocity was measured by sensors at the soil surface at different distance from the pile center (2.5d, 5d, 10d, 17.5d, 20d, and 25d), where d is the pile width. The results shows that the maximum velocity of vibration wave for precast concert pile is to be (1.4 mm/s) at penetration depth of (20 to 24) cm for a horizontal distance of 2.5d from the center of the pile model, and decreased to zero at distance of 26d.

Keywords: Damping of soil, Pile driving, Vibration, Geometric damping, total damping, vibration amplitude

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.7, No.6 (Nov/Dec 2017)