Bearing capacity and settlement of concrete-cored DCM pile in soft ground

A new kind of composite pile named Concrete-cored DCM (Deep-Cement-Mixing) pile is introduced for supporting medium loads in soft clay ground. This composite pile is composed of an inner precast concrete pile and an external DCM pile socket, where the high strength concrete pile is designed to bear the load of building, and DCM pile socket acts to transfer axial force into the surrounding soils by skin frictions. In this paper we introduce its application in soft ground, and tentatively investigated its bearing capacity and settlement using static loading tests and Finite Element Method. Our study indicates that concrete-cored DCM pile acts as a friction pile and is an economical and effective method for settlement control and capacity improvement in soft clay ground. This study is also valuable for research on the mechanism of other composite piles. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.