Optimization Method for Irregular Piled Raft Foundation on Layered Soil Media

Abstract

Important buildings such as nuclear power plants always require stricter control of differential settlement than ordinary buildings. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an optimized design for the piled raft foundations of important buildings. In this paper, a new optimization method (using different pile diameters and different pile spacing) was proposed for the design of piled raft foundations. This method adjusts the pile diameters and pile spacing according to the stress distribution at the pile top of the initial design to achieve a more uniform settlement of the raft and stress distribution on top of piles, which can solve the differential settlement problems caused by uneven loads of the superstructure. After optimized design, the differential settlement and integral bending moment of the raft decreased more than 64% and 52%, respectively, and the differential stress on top of piles decreased by at least 63%. The new method proposed in this paper could be applied to large-scale piled raft foundations with complex superstructure loads.