CASE STUDY OF A DRILLED PIER SUBJECTED TO LATERAL LOADS.

Lateral load test was performed on a circular drilled pier by Davisson and Salley (1969). Steel casing pipe was provided for the concrete pier. The details of the pier and the soil properties are given in Fig. 17.28.

The pier was instrumented and subjected to cyclic lateral loads. The load deflection curve as obtained by Davison et al., is shown in the same figure.

Direct method (Murthy and Subba Rao, 1995) has been used here to predict the load displacement relationship for a continuous load increase by making use of Eq. (16.29). The predicted curve is also shown in Fig. 17.28. There is an excellent agreement between the predicted and the observed values.

Figure 17.28 Load deflection relationship, Pier 25 (Davisson et al., 1969)