IMPACT: Cloud-based software for stress-wave and drivability analysis of driven piles

Mark Randolph

Dynamic analysis software, IMPACT, was originally developed some 30 years ago for drivability assessment and stress-wave matching of driven piles. Over the last three years it has been transformed from an Excel-based Fortran DLL to a web-based application. There are two main advantages of this: the first is in the ease of updating the software without needing to circulate all users; the second (and much greater) is with respect to the speed of analysis since multiple analyses may be run concurrently using the parallel computational architecture of the cloud. Dynamic pile-soil interaction is implemented using a continuum approach, although the traditional Smith models are retained as an option, with the internal soil plug treated independently from the external soil. Pile-soil interaction parameters may be derived from CPT data, either from in-built published recommendations or from user-input algebraic expressions for a range of different soil behaviour types. For drivability analysis, friction degradation is allowed for automatically using in-built or user-supplied relationships. The talk will provide an overview of 1D dynamic analysis of piles and how drivability analyses and stress-wave fitting of dynamic test data are undertaken efficiently on the web-app. Example applications are presented.

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