Experiences with jacked piles

Experiences with jacked piles of various sizes in a variety of soil types for many major projects in Australia are described. The jacked pile has been successful in providing a “quiet” method of pile installation with negligible vibration. However, special precautions are required by the geotechnical engineer involved in jacked piles. These are related to the conventional interpretation of the installation load as the pile failure load, the forces associated with the pile rig grip mechanism, lateral soil movements induced by the rig supports, and the use of CPT and SPT to predict the installation forces. In this paper, guidelines are given on each of these aspects.