High-Capacity Piles at the Stony Creek Bridge Project

High-capacity piles (HCPs) offer a highly attractive foundation option to geotechnical designers, but regular acceptance and wider implementation remain elusive. Until recently, large-diameter high-capacity piling was mainly used in the offshore oil industry; there the unique environment and design requirements led to piling where capacity did not need to be verified. When larger-diameter piling began to emerge as a cost–benefit option onshore, little was known about the unique behavior. Although there were no scalability problems in dynamic stress measurement and energy calculations, engineers found dynamically estimated pile capacity to be unreliable. To provide the required capacity information for HCPs, the California Department of Transportation developed static axial pile load tests for piles up to 8,000 kips (35 MN). Through a case study of the Stony Creek Bridge Project, the California Department of Transportation presents its experience with the advantages and limitations of HCPs. The 8-ft (2.44-m) diameter and 170-ft (51.8-m) long steel piles at the Stony Creek Bridge are reputed to be the largest piles ever driven on land.