OPTIMUM DESIGN OF IRREGULAR SHAPE PILE CAP

Pile foundation is one form of a foundation that is commonly used to distribute the load of the building over a vast area to transfer the loading intensity within a secure bearing capacity of soil beneath the structure. The pile foundation consists of two major components: Pile cap and single pile or cluster of piles. The flexibility of the pile cap affects individual pile head forces and the bending moments and shear forces in individual piles. A pure fixed-head condition is rarely doable within the field, even once a pile group is constrained by a stiff concrete pile cap, because the cap itself rotates. In this study, the design and analysis of an irregular shape pile cap due to unsymmetrical action load surround the area of pile cap was investigated using manual calculation namely Beam Method and Truss Method. Pile cap was re-designed in accordance with Eurocode 2 using Prota Structure-Orion Software. The results show that the required area value of steel obtained in the software is substantially higher compared to the manual calculation. The optimum design was proposed by reducing the thickness of the pile cap.