Experimental and Theoretical Research of Deformation of Vertically Loaded Displacement Piles in Sand Soil

The displacement piles are one of the oldest type of foundation not just in Lithuania, but also all over the world. Stiff, glacial origin sands lay not far from the ground surface in Lithuania as opposed to the rest of the Western Europe, therefore this kind of foundation is carried out into practice very often in our country. For geotechnical engineers it is very hard to decide which method should be applied, when there is no local experience. Five approaches are discussed on this paper and the results of three single piles’ tests are compared. The full scale single piles’ tests were carried out at the artificial bearing stratum pit. Piles’ diameter was 330 mm. The ratio of the piles’ depth and diameter were 3.3, 4.4 and 4.8. In conclusion of this paper the recommendations are given, which should be applied in different cases using mentioned above methods.