The increase of passive earth pressure due to the dowel effect of foundation piles

The Institute and Laboratory of Geotechnics of the Technische Universitat Darmstadt is performing research activities on several geotechnical research fields. These activities are divided up into basic research and applied research which is performed in close cooperation to contractor enterprises during the planning, design and execution of high-tech projects, e.g. the high-rise buildings in Frankfurt am Main like the Commerzbank building or the MAIN TOWER which is the first high-rise in Frankfurt using the subsoil as a seasonal thermal storage. The interaction between economy and science led to a lot of cognitions of which all have been implemented in challenging projects for an economical and ecological optimization of geotechnical methods. Some of the recent research and development projects are displayed in the following chapters.