Behavior of Advanced Densified Wood Pile under Lateral Loading: A Feasibility Study

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Abstract

Timber piles are renewable, low-cost, and widely used displacement pile foundations. However, with the development of steel and concrete piles, timber piles have steadily declined as timber piles have low and varying stiffness and strength. This work investigates the behavior of a densified wood pile subjected to lateral loading to evaluate its feasibility in a deep foundation application. A pine wood pile (600 × 38 × 51 mm, length × width × height) was subjected to partial delignification followed by hot-pressing densification to produce a densified wood pile. After hot-pressing densification, the size of the densified wood pile changed to 610 × 38 × 38 mm, reducing the pile thickness by 25%. The densified wood pile was then cut to the dimension of 610 × 38 × 19 mm and installed in a soil box (2.0 × 1.0 × 0.75 m), which was then filled with a local dense sand [D50 of 1.25 mm, and relative compaction (R.C.) of about 95%]. The densified wood pile was instrumented with eight strain gauges and two Linear Variable Displacement Transducers (LVDTs) and subjected to a lateral load test. A natural pine wood pile with the exact dimensions of the densified wood pile was then instrumented and tested under lateral loading following the same procedure. The results showed that the ratio of the ultimate lateral loads between the densified wood pile and natural wood pile was 1.96, showing an improvement of pile lateral load capacity of about 100% when using the densified wood pile.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Geotechnical Special Publication

First Page

47

Last Page

55

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS