19 Design of Pile Foundations for Buildings 19.1. Introduction Weak soils with heavy column loads require either rafts or piles. Aratv, in general, is more economical than piles. But, when rafts become very large, then piles have to be used for restricting both cost and settlement. When piles and raft are both equal in cost, then piles are preferable to rafts, as the settlement for piles is considerably less than that of a raft. Thus, pile foundations have to be used when raft foundations are not suitable on grounds of economy or settlement considerations. Cast-in-situ driven piles of diameter 300 mu: to 600 mm are quite common for medium capacity piles of 40 to 120 tonnes. Cast-in-situ bored piles are available for high capacities of 150 to 300 tonnes and these piles cause no vibrations to the existing adjoining buildings unlike the driven piles which are noisy and disturb structures in the immediate vicinity. Cast-in-situ under-reamed piles of 200 mm to 450 mm diameter of depth varying from 3.0 m to 6.0 m are low capacity piles of 20 to 40 tonnes which are ideat for foundations of lowrise buildings in black cotton soils, as they provide good resistance to uplifting forces caused by expansion of black cotton soil. Economy of pile foundations is achieved when the cost of pile caps is minimised. This is possible if few high capacity piles are used under each column. The high capacity of a pile is given by inereasing either the diameter or the depth ofa pile. By increasing the diameter, pile spacing (equal to three times the diameter) increases and this leads to a large pile cap, which inereases the cost. So, pile depth. should be increased to get high capacity piles. Thus, economy requires the use of a few high capacity deep piles under a column rather than a large number of low capacity shallow piles under it. Aminimum of three piles is required under a column in order to resist all the column loads and moments acting on it. If one or two piles are provided under a column, grade beams have to be provided in one or more directions, which are designed to fully resist column base moments and piles resist the vertical load only. Further, column shear will also be resisted by piles, which are assumed to have a horizontal load capacity equal to 5 per cent of its vertical load capacity’. It may be noted that horizontal load on a pile is the result of earthquake.or wind loads only, for which 25 per cent excess pile capacity is allowed by codes?. Design of a pile foundation has two parts. (e) Design of pile group or pile layout (6) Design of pile cap