| Summary: | Many structures founded on pile-raft foundations on soft clay in Singapore has been conservatively designed without considering the contribution from the raft due to the lack of knowledge (and thus design confidence) on the soil-structure interaction, bearing capacity of foundation against settlement. This generally resulted in very expensive foundation costs particularly in the soft clay conditions.
In view of the increasingly high prices of construction materials globally, it is timely to look into the development of an optimum design that provides safe, lasting and leaner design, allows use of resources effectively, economically and yet performing pile-raft foundation system efficiently in the soft clay condition. To achieve these, a thorough understanding of the soil-structure interaction, bearing capacity and settlement behaviours of piled-raft foundations in soft clay are of paramount importance.
This research is identified as being of importance to practical civil and structure engineers in providing them with simplified techniques to perform a quick preliminary assessment and design of piled-raft foundation, before carrying out complicated and time-consuming 3-D finite element analyses. This is particularly useful when a quick assessment of the feasibility and construction costs of piled-raft foundation is required during the preliminary design stage.
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