Contrary to most of pile design, the design of min-piles are controlled by internal capacity instead of external carrying capacity due to their small cross-sectional area.
There are mainly two reasons to account for designing mini-piles as friction piles:
(i) Due to its high slenderness ratio, a pile of 200mm diameter with 5m long has a shaft area of 100 times greater than cross-sectional area. Therefore, the shaft friction mobilized should be greater than end resistance.
(ii) Settlements of 10%-20% of pile diameter are necessary to mobilize full end bearing capacity, compared with 0.5%-1% of pile diameter to develop maximum shaft resistance.
Left-in casings for mini-piles have the following advantages:
(i) Improve resistance to corrosion of main bars;
(ii) Provide additional restraint against lateral buckling;
(iii) Improve the grout quality by preventing intrusion of groundwater during concreting;
(iv) Prevent occurrence of necking during lifting up of casings during concreting.
This question is taken from book named – A Self Learning Manual – Mastering Different Fields of Civil Engineering Works (VC-Q-A-Method) by Vincent T. H. CHU.
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