laterally loaded piles
laterally loaded piles
(OP)
How does one calculate the depth and diameter of laterally loaded cast-in-place concrete piles. Planning a conc pile cap on 2 or more piles to carry the structural steel base of WF vertical columns forming a closed sign 12' wide and 25' high. Not fussy about embedding the WF columns. Obviously it's going to be a function of certain properties of the soil. We are confident of the appropriate wind load we have researched.





RE: laterally loaded piles
I am unsure on what the soil material was (I will dig up the design tomorrow at work) but you can back-calculate what soil strength you need to resist the overturning moment and give this to the geotech and see what they recommend.
Personally, I don't think a pile cap will be necessary. You could just have the WF columns bear on the pile head (with a thick size baseplate, typically 1-1/2"). I would also embed a end-plate welded to the hold-down bolts.
I can attach a sketch if it were to be more helpful.
Look at some standard drawings for highway sign structures from your local DOT, they should be a good indication on what the design looks like.
RE: laterally loaded piles