Any reliable software for designing of piles under vertical and lateral loadings

[MelCao]

I am from a small piling contracting company, currently we use spreadsheet to calculate the vertical capacity of the pile based on the shaft resistance and base resistance.
very often piles are also under lateral loads such as wind, earthquake, then we use Wallap to model the piles under a horizontal load and get the deflection and bending moment in the piles. unfortunately the Wallap doesn't analyze any vertical capacity.

it's quite time consuming this way. i am wondering if there is any easy and RELIABLE software can analyze the pile under vertical and horizontal loads. I can use Software like Plaxis or even more sophisticated FEM software, but it's just matter of time, we need to do the design quickly and send out our offer to the potential clients.

I want to know if any of you work for big consulting firms and use some efficient and effective approaches.

thanks very much/

 

[Guest262653]

Hello,

From a quick google search, I found the following programs that integrate both axial and lateral analysis:

http://civiltech.com/software/all-pile.php

http://www.finesoftware.eu/geotechnical-software/piles/

My approach is similar to yours, but I rely on spreadsheets only. Never used either of these programs, but maybe you could ask them for a demo version and check if it suits your needs.

 

[MelCao]

I did the search as well, and aslo found these programs, however i heard from another engineer he said the all-pile is not accurate. he is the manager, if he votes no i can't use it in the company.

Wondering if you work in a big consulting firm? usually big firms use more reliable approaches.

the spreadsheet is OK, but for retaining structures is not accurate enough i guess.

 

[Guest262653]

Well, I have no experience with the software, so if your manager says so, I'll take it as valid.

I worked in a consulting firm in Portugal, not that big, as in Portugal the market isn't that big, but we did do some large interesting projects (large industrial plants, cut and cover tunnels, underpasses and metro stations, etc). Now I work as an independent consultant, doing structural and geotechnical engineering and the design approaches must be simplified as there isn't enough turnover to invest in geotechnical software (yet, I hope!).

For pile foundations, what we usually did was to combine spreadsheets for axial capacity (and it doesn't get any more reliable than that, in my opinion) and different approaches for lateral analysis, depending for each project on the complexity, structural system, load level, etc. For small buildings, a simple elastic method was often used, but for complex structures, a simplified non-linear spring model built in SAP2000 was sometimes used. Nothing fancier than that, like 3d pile models in Plaxis or GTS, as we normally didn't deal with large monopile foundations (or had good quality geotechnical information in the first place to justify a higher-level analysis...).

For simple or buttressed RC stem walls up to 10m high, the use of spreadsheets is more than enough. If properly set up, you can design foundations, walls, buttresses, perform pseudo-static seismic design, parametric analysis, etc.

For embedded retaining walls for excavations, 3 levels of analysis were used: limit equilibrium analysis (spreadsheet or by hand), beam and non-linear spring models in a generic structural analysis program and 2D continuum models using a dedicated geotechnical software (Plaxis was standard). For small projects, like a single-anchor concrete pile wall or a soldier pile wall for a 3 or 4 m deep excavation, without any stringent displacement constraints, a simple limit equilibrium model was often enough. For 20m deep multi-anchored excavations, we used all of the methods (preliminary design with limit equilibrium methods and FEM analysis for final design).

Hope it helps.

 

[MelCao]

Hi avscorreia:

Thanks for your reply.

i understand that we can do mannual calculations for these retaining structures. The thing is we are a contracting company, when we do the design we are walking on the edge, we need to get min. acceptable FOS, this is how we save money for the client. Conservative design will never win us a job. it's a bit miserable working as a designer in a contracting company to be honest.