Proceedings of the Eighteenth (2008) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 6-11,

2008 Copyright 2008 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE) ISBN 978-1-880653-70-8 (Set); ISBN 1-880653-68-0 (Set)

Expansion Characteristics of Ground by Pulse Power

Tae-Hoon Kim, Kyung-Seob Cha and Seon-Ju Kim
Researcher, Civil Eng. Research Team, Institute of Construction Technology, Daewoo E&C Suwon, Gyunggi, South Korea

Young-Su Chae
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engrg Univ. of Suwon Suwon, Gyunggi, South Korea

ABSTRACT
This paper introduces the PDT(Pulse Discharge Technology) piling method. The PDT piling method is to install in-situ a pile using electrical power so called Pulse power. Since this piling technique can make not only a bore hole to be expanded but also the ground to be improved by compaction, the pile installed by PDT appears to be able to develop shaft and end bearing capacity efficiently. In this study, we introduce a coefficient of expansion. In order for quantitative evaluation of the relation between pulse power and ground expansion a series of in-situ tests were conducted. In the tests, we divided soil conditions into several groups by constituents and the number of blows in the standard penetration test, N. The tests were carried out on various numbers of pulse discharge. As a result, it was concluded that the coefficient of expansion appeared to increase with an increase of the number of discharge and with a decrease of the number of blows, N. In addition, the coefficient of expansion appeared to differ from one position to another even though having the same N value.

final blows to drive the piles into the ground so that the end bearing capacity becomes high enough. These final blows induce some degree of vibration, noise and pile head damage and so on (Lee et al, 2003; Hong et al, 1997; De Beer, 1988; Broms et al, 1988). For these reasons, a new piling method which can take advantages from both driven and bored piles is necessary to be developed. In order to overcome the disadvantages of such a bored piling method, several researches have been carried out focusing on enhancement of shaft and end bearing resistance. For example, Chai (2000), and Hong, et al (2005) proposed a new boring method, so called SDA(Seperated Doughunt Auger). In this method they made an attempt to minimize the ground disturbance and the hole collapse by means of a casing. However, this method has still difficulty in cleaning the slumped soil perfectly. Meanwhile, Prakash et al(1990) mentioned that if the concrete at base of the piles is compacted with high energy, the disturbed soil may be re-compacted. In other word, if the loose soil is recompacted by one way another, the more enhanced the shaft resistance as well as the end bearing capacity could be expected. In this paper, a new piling technique, so called PDT (Pulse Discharge Technology) piling method, is presented. The PDT piling technique is to install in-situ piles using electrical power. In this technique, the disturbed hole can be recovered with such a high electrical power, so called pulsed power. Furthermore, a series of pilot field tests were conducted in order to investigate the characteristics of ground expansion.

KEY WORDS: Pulse Power, Coefficient of Expansion, SPT N, Bored

Pile

INTRODUCTION
Since 1990s the piling technique, in which a precast pile is installed in the ground after boring, has been widely used in Korea especially in urban area(Lee et al, 2003). Even though this technique induces much less vibration and noise than pile driving, it has several disadvantages as following. First, the ground disturbance is inevitable during boring and it gives rise to the reduction of shaft resistance. In general, it has been known that the bearing capacity of a bored pile is taken by shaft resistance up to 60%. Such a shaft resistance is, however, far smaller than that of a driven pile due to the ground disturbance and stress release (Van Weele, 1988; DeBeer, 1988). Second, when boring the hole, there always be some amount of slumped or loose soils at the bottom of it, and if it is not ensured that the base is clean and is free of any slumped or loose soils the piles may have a large settlement and less the end bearing capacity. Therefore, this technique requires the

PILING TECHNIQUE Pulse Power

Pulse power is the physical value that indicates the energy change per unit time (dE/dt). The power depends on how fast the energy is released. In other words, if a unit of energy is discharged in 1 sec, a watt of power will be generated. However, if the same energy is discharged in 1 (10-6sec), the power will be 1MW(106Watts) as shown in Fig. 1.

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Fig. 1 Pulse power

Shock Wave
A shock wave can be generated by the pulse power in a fluidal medium. When a high voltage generates between two electrodes inserted in the medium, the fluidal material between electrodes may heat up. Then the material will be going to expand outward. Meanwhile the material outside the electrodes remains cold and will restrain the heat-up material from expanding. Because of this opposite characteristics between expansion and restraint, a high pressure will be generated at the boundary. Finally this pressure is changed into a different type of energy so called shock wave and propagates through the medium until meets a different type of medium. Once the shock wave reaches the different type of medium, which herein represents a soil layer, it pushes the soil media. Finally the soil layer gets expanded. Fig. 2 shows how the electrical energy changes to the shock wave and potential energy by stage.

(b) Example of expanded pile by pulse power Fig. 3 Conceptual view of ground expansion and an example

PDT Equipment
The pulse discharge equipment consists of main switch, capacitor bank, coaxial power cable and load impact cell as shown in Fig. 4. The process of pulsed power generation is as follows. At first, the commercial electricity is stored and compacted in a capacitor bank. Then the stored electricity is discharged in a moment using a special switching system for high electricity. The momentary discharged electricity generates a high electrical power, so called pulsed power. Finally this pulsed power of high electricity is translated to the ground through the load impact cell.

Fig. 2 Energy Transformation The shock wave generated through the several energy transformations as shown earlier propagates to the ground and make it expanded and recompacted. Fig. 3 shows a sketch of concept of expansion by the shock wave induced by the pulse power and an example a pile after expansion.

PDT Pile Technique

The piling method introduced in this paper uses the electrical power mentioned above. The PDT piling technique is a method that constructs an expanded bored pile at field by pulsed power. The expansion of the bored hole is achieved by the shock wave generated from the pulsed power. Fig.5 shows the procedure of pile installation. The details of piling procedure are as follows. First, a hole with diameter of 250mm or 300mm is bored by means of screw auger which has a small pipe at the center. When the auger reaches the designed depth, mortar is injected through the pipe. The mortar injection is continued as the auger screw out reversely until the hole is fully filled with. Having finished the injection, a steel cage is inserted into the hole. Finally, a pulse power generator is inserted up to the bottom of the hole, and generates pulse power. As mentioned earlier, the hole is likely to expand when the shock wave reaches the bottom and side of it. The expanded space is filled with the mortar simultaneously. This stage is repeated at the designed positions as the generator lifts up.

(a) Conceptual view of expansion

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the varied area. In this section, the coefficient of expansion is introduced. The details of derivation of the coefficient of expansion (Ec) are as follows. First, the shape of expansion in a hole is assumed to be sphere as shown in Fig. 6, for the shock wave is expected to propagate in radial direction.

Fig. 4 Component of Pulse Discharge Equipment

Fig. 6 The assumed shape of a hole expansion by pulse discharge The volumetric change by pulse discharge can be calculated with easy on the basis of material mechanics. In other words, when a bored hole is filled with mortar and subjected to pulsed power there occurs volume change as much as the mortar is falling because of the hole expansion. If the initial diameter of the hole is defined as do and the depth of mortar descent as h shown in Fig. 6, the volumetric change can be defined as following

Fig. 5 PDT pile installation

PDT Pile Technique

The piling method introduced in this paper uses the electrical power mentioned above. The PDT piling technique is a method that constructs an expanded bored pile at field by pulsed power. The expansion of the bored hole is achieved by the shock wave generated from the pulsed power. Fig.5 shows the procedure of pile installation. The details of piling procedure are as follows. First, a hole with diameters of 250mm or 300mm is bored by means of screw auger which has a small pipe at the center. When the auger reaches the designed depth, mortar is injected through the pipe. The mortar injection is continued as the auger screw out reversely until the hole is fully filled with. Having finished the injection, a steel cage is inserted into the hole. Finally, a pulse power generator is inserted up to the bottom of the hole, and generates pulse power. As mentioned earlier, the hole is likely to expand when the shock wave reaches the bottom and side of it. And the expanded space is to be file with the mortar simultaneously. This stage is repeated at the designed positions as the generator lifts up.

V = A h

d 02 h

(1)

Meanwhile, the initial volume of a pile before subjected to plused power effect can be obtained by

V0 =

d 02 H

(2)

Where, V0 = initial volume, H= height The volume of the expanded sphere by pulsed power can be obtained by adding the volume change calculated by Eq. (1) to the initial volume calculated by Eq. (2). That is,

COEFFICIENT OF EXPANSION (EC)

In order to calculate the bearing capacity of a pile, the areas of shaft and tip of the pile are to be determined. In general, most piles have constant shape and diameter along the longitudinal direction, which means the areas are constant. However, for the piles installed using the pulsed power, the shape varies and therefore the area is different one another depending on the pulsed power. Therefore the most important thing for the calculation of bearing capacity is how to take into account

V final = V0 + V p = V0 + V =
(3)

d 02 H +

d 02 h

Looking at Fig. 7, the sphere seems to be cut by the cylindrical column at the top and bottom of it, and its volume can be calculated Eq. (4) as

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following

EXPERIMENTS

V final =

h 3

3 2 2 2 d final + d 0 + h 3 4 4
2 h 2 = rfinal r02 = 2 d2 final d 0

Soil Profile
(4) In order to investigate how much expanded by the soil classification and conditions, a series of experiments were conducted in the field. First of all, the soils were divided into two groups by the material, such as coarse and fine. Then, each group was again divided into three sub categories according to the Standard Penetration Test Value (N). The tests were carried out at four different sites. The soil profiles of each site are presented in Table 1.

Where, H= 2h,

From Ep. (3), and Eq. (4), we can obtain

h = 3 0.19d 02 h d final = d 02 + (0.19d 02 h) 2 / 3

From Eq. (1) through Eq. (3), the expansion ratio(ER) as

Table 1 Soil profile

(5)
USCS

Site #1
Layer (m) SPT(N) USCS

Site #2
Layer (m) SPT (N)

(6)

SM/GP SM CL SM GP SM/GP SM/GP

2.8 4.4 1.2 2.6 2.2 3.8 >7.0 Site #3

16 6~10 12 28~43 45 50+ 50

+

SM/GP GC SM/GP SM/GP

1.8 4.1 10.6 >6.0 Site #4

15 12~24 31~50+ 50+

ER =

V final V0 V = V0 V0

= 4

h = 100(%) 2 H d0 H 4

d h
2 0

(7)

USCS

Layer (m)

SPT (N)

USCS

Layer (m)

SPT (N)

Where, ER= Expansion Ratio, Vfinal= volume of the expanded sphere

SM ML CL SM Test

1.2 8.5 4.8 >1.5

11 7~27 7~9 19

SM/GP CL SM GP

5.1 3.0 2.3 0.6+

4~10 6~17 17~18 29

Once a hole is filled with mortar after boring, the pulse power generator is inserted into the hole. Then, the depths of mortar descent were measured with change of the number of pulse discharge. In order to measure the descent depth in accuracy for each case, the impulse was stopped whenever the designed number of impulse was completed. Having measured the depth, again the hole was file with mortar up to the top. The impulse activity was repeated as the apparatus was lifted up. The impulse was carried out every one meter from the bottom of the hole. Also, a serious of tests with three different numbers of impulse were conducted at the same soil classification and condition in order to investigate the effect of the number of impulse on ground expansion. (a) Before (b) After Fig. 7 Volumetric change after expansion by pulsed power According to Eq. (7) the expansion ratio of a bored pile can be estimated with the depth of mortar descent. In the meantime, the coefficient of expansion (EC) can be define as the ratio of the final to the initial diameter as following Expansion Characteristics Fig. 8 shows the coefficient of expansion with respect to pulse discharge number. Looking at the figure, the coefficient of expansion seems to increase as the number of pulse discharge increases. This trend seems to occur for different ground conditions. According to the figure, the relationship between the coefficient of expansion and discharging number seems to be linear in the zone of the number of discharge less than 20. When the number is over 20 the slope appears to gradually decreases, and the degree of decrease seems to be more noticeable for stiff soils. From the result, it may be said that the effect of the number of pulse discharge on ground expansion is dependent of ground condition, and remains constant at the end.

Ec =

df d0

(8)

Affiliation(s) and all body text, and a 10-point font for all Section and Subsection Heads.

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the hole should be high enough respectively, so that the energy loss is to be relatively small. After all, it may be concluded that the ground expansion is highly affected by overburden pressure as well as ground condition and number of pulse discharge. In addition, the coefficient of expansion seems to vary with exponential relationship to the SPT value, and it can be expressed by a formula following as.

Ec = ae bN

(9)

Where, EC = Coefficient of expansion, a, b = Variables N= Standard Penetration Test Value (N), In order to examine the sensitivity of the coefficient of expansion with respect to the variable, b, the Eq. (9) without the variable, a is re-plotted with respect to the standard penetration test (SPT) value as shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 8 Expansion Coefficient vs. Pulse discharge number (Sandy Soil) Fig. 9 shows the coefficient of expansion with respect to the standard penetration test (SPT) value on the three different discharge numbers of 10, 20 and 40. As shown in the figure, the larger the discharge numbers the greater the effect of expansion. On the other side the coefficient of expansion seems to decrease as the SPT value increases. Looking at the figure, it is found that the coefficient of expansion varies with difference from 3% up to 10% at the same number of pulse discharge. It may be explained by overburden effect. In other words, the overburden at the locations near the surface might be small, which means that the confining pressure is low as well. Such a low confining pressure causes the loss of the energy and the reduction of the power acting on the plane of the drilled hole. Hence the low coefficient of ground expansion is expected.

Fig. 10 e-bN vs. Standard Penetration Test Value (N) According to the figure, the effect of the variable b on the expansion coefficient seems to be insignificant regardless to the number of pulse discharge. Therefore it may be possible to assume the variable b as a constant. On the basis of the regression line in Fig. 10, the Eq (9) can be rewritten by

Ec = ae 0.01N

(10)

Likewise, in order to figure out the relationship between the number of pulse discharge and the variable, a, the values of a with respect to the number of pulse discharge are plotted as shown in Fig. 11. Looking at the figure, the variable, a can be defined in terms of the number of pulse discharge following as,

a = 0.31Ln(n) + 0.83
Fig. 9 Expansion Coefficient vs. Standard Penetration Test Value, N (Sandy Soil) In contrast, the overburden pressures at the locations close to the end of By substituting Eq (10) and Eq (11) into Eq (9), we obtain

(11)

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Ec = ae 0.01 N = (0.31Ln(n) + 0.83)e 0.01N

(12)

Where, EC = Coefficient of expansion, n = Number of pulse discharge N= Standard Penetration Test Value (N)

comparing with a sandy soil. It might be because of its particle size. In other words, the permeability of sandy soil is high enough so that the pore water can be easily dissipated during discharging, which induces an instant compression of soil skeleton. In contrast, the permeability of clayey soil is too low to allow pore water to be dissipated at the moment of discharge.

Fig. 11 a vs. Number of Pulse Discharge (n)

Fig. 13 Expansion Coefficient vs. Pulse discharge number (Clayey Soil) Consequently, it may be clear that the larger the particle size, the greater the effect of pulse discharge. On the basis of observation and analysis, the coefficients of expansion with the types of material and the number of pulse discharge are presented in Table. 2. Table 2 Coefficient of Expansion Pulse 10 times 20 times 40 times Discharge(n) Ground Coefficient of Expansion(Ec) SPT(N) ~10 11~20
Sandy soil ground

1.45 1.33 1.21 1.11 1.01 1.02

1.73 1.56 1.41 1.26 1.14 1.04

1.86 1.69 1.54 1.39 1.26 1.05

21~30 31~40 40~

Clayey soil ground

CONCLUSIONS
Fig. 12 Expansion Coefficient vs. Standard Penetration Test Value (N) Fig. 12 represents the expansion coefficient divided by the variable, a with respect to the standard penetration test (SPT) value. As seen, the normalized expansion coefficient appears to be in inverse proportion to the SPT value. Fig. 13 shows the expansion coefficient with respect to the SPT value on clayey soils. According to the figure, it appears that the effect of pulse discharge on a clayey soil is relatively small In this study, a new piling technique so called PDT piling technique was presented. In order to investigate the effects of pulse power on the ground improvement, a series of pilot tests were performed. As a result, the following conclusions could be derived. When installing a bored pile or an in-situ pile, ground disturbance and reduced strength are inevitable. However, these disadvantages can be overcome by an electrical power, so called pulse power. It may be

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because the pulse power enables the ground to be improved by compaction and the volume of a pile to be expanded. The coefficient of Expansion increases with an increase of the number of pulse discharges and has an inverse proportion to the standard penetration test value, N. The coefficient of expansion varies from 3% up to 10% at the same number of pulse discharge for the same ground condition. The difference may be because of overburden effect. The effect of pulse discharge is relatively small for clayey soils. This may be because of the low permeability.

REFERENCES
American Society for Testing and Materials (1996), "Standard Test Method for High-Strain Dynamic Test of Piles", ASTM D 4945-89. American Society for Testing and Materials (1994), "Standard Test Method for Piles Under Static Axial Compressive Load", ASTM D 1143-81. Broms, B.B., Chang, M.F. and Goh, A.T.C. (1988), "Bored Piles in Singapore", Proceedings of the 1stInternational Geotechnical Seminar on Deep Foundations on Bored and Auger Piles, pp.17~34. Chai, S.G.(2003c),"Skin Friction Capacity of Separated Doughnut Auger(SDA) Pile" The Proceeding of the 13th International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference (ISOPE-2003), Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A, pp.740~745 Chai, S.G.(2005)"Bearing Capacity Characteristics of Separated Doughnut Auger (SDA) Pile in Clay and Silty Soil" The Proceeding of the 15th International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference

(ISOPE-2005), Seoul Korea, pp.548~554 Choi, S.B., Kim, B.I., Han, S.J. and Kim, S.S.(2003), "The Bearing Capacity Evaluation of Pre-Augering Piles", 2003 Annual Conference Proceeding, KSCE, pp. 3348~3353. Chun, B.S. and Cho, C.W.(1997), "Analysis of Load-Settlement Curves in Driven and Embedded Piles", Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society, Vol.13, No.6, pp. 61~70. De Beer, E (1988), "Different Behavior of Bored and Driven Piles", Proceedings ofthe 1st International Geotechnical Seminar on Deep Foundation on Bored and Auger Piles, pp. 47~78. Hong, W.P., Caie, S.G., Han, J.G.(2002), "Skin Friction Capacity of SDA(Separated Doughnut Auger) Pile", 2002 Annual Conference proceedings, KSCE, pp. 5~8. Kim, T.H., Chai, S.G. and Park, J.M.(2005), "A Study of Applicability of PDT pile", Proceedings of KSCE Annual Conference, pp.4309~4312 Lee, M.W.(2003), "The current problems associated with design and construction of pile foundations in Korea and the proposed countermeasures", Conference proceedings of foundation engineering committee, KGS, pp. 19~29. Paik, K.H.(1997), "Characteristics of the Bearing Capacity for New Auger-Drilled Piles", Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society, Vol.13, No.4, pp. 25~35. Park, C.K., Park. Y.B., Lee, M.W., Cho, C.W., Yi, C.T. and Lee, W.J.(1995), "A Study on the reduction effect of noise and vibration using auger-drilled piling", Proceedings of KGS Fall National Conference, pp. 1-31~1-40. Van Weele, A.F.(1988), "Cast in Situ Piles-Installation Methods, Soil Disturbance and Resulting Pile Behavior", Proceedings of the 1st International Geotechnical Seminar on Deep Foundation on Bored and Auger Piles, pp. 219~226.

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