A novel soil reaction model for continuous impact pile driving

Abstract

Impact pile driving is widely employed in various environments. The soil surrounding driven piles undergoes large shear displacements and highly cyclic loads, leading to significant strength degradation. This paper introduces a novel soil reaction model with easily calibrated parameters to estimate the pile penetration performance under continuous impact driving, incorporating both cyclic degradation and base gap. Soil cumulative plastic displacement is utilized to quantity the degradation, enabling more accurate simulation of cyclic pile response. The model is integrated into the pile driving system and applied in multiple-blow analysis. Non-linear cumulative displacement-blow count curves are analyzed and the development of residual stress varies between the pile upper and lower sections. It is found that lower blow counts are required when cyclic degradation is considered, although the increased rebound effect may counterbalance this benefit. Comparative analyses for degradation constants further demonstrate that early-stage degradation has a more pronounced impact. Finally, the proposed model is also adopted to predict blow count in field practice, offering valuable insights for driveability analysis.