BEARING CAPACITY OF FULL-FRICTION MICROPILES BASED ON SIMPLE FIELD LOAD TEST RESULTS IN BANJARMASIN VERY SOFT SOIL

Abstract

Piles for foundations are used when hard soil layers are located far below the ground surface. Full-friction piles are defined as piles that depend solely on the friction between the pile and soil where the embedded depth is less than 10 meters. For decades, Galam wood piles have been used as foundations for light to medium-weight constructions. Due to Galam wood restrictions in length and diameter, concrete micropiles are used as an alternative. Therefore, it is important to know the actual bearing capacity of concrete micropiles in the field. A simple axial field load test was carried out on 3 (three) test pile samples of 15 cm x 15 cm concrete micro piles with pile length variations of 4 m, 5 m, and 9 m. This paper shows the ultimate and unit shaft bearing capacity for full-friction piles fully embedded in very soft soil. The 4 m long concrete micro piles produced an ultimate bearing capacity of 1,700 kg = 1.7 tons, the 5 m length 2,400 kg = 2.4 tons, and the 9 m length 3,550 kg = 3.55 tons indicating the ultimate bearing capacity increased linearly with the pile lengths. The pile shaft unit bearing capacity obtained was between 657.407 – 800 kg/m² of pile shaft area, where the obtained values show nearly constant results with similar conditions.