Study of Side Shear Stress Development for Drilled Shafts in Very Weak Porous Limestone using Axial Load Transfer Analyses
Authors:   , Frediani Matias Renato , Pando Miguel A 
Published: August 2023

This thesis presents a series of axial load transfer analyses performed to investigate the mobilization of side shear stresses of drilled shafts installed in a very weak, porous limestone formation in Puerto Rico (PR). The numerical analyses presented are predictions of two axial load tests carried out on instrumented drilled shafts installed in very weak, porous limestone at a test site located in northwest PR. The field test component was performed by a former MS student of the research group of Dr. Pando when employed by the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. The test site involved an outcrop of a very weak, porous, and highly weathered limestone with a representative unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of 2.7 MPa, and an average rock quality designation (RQD) of 34%. Descriptions of the test site and the rock characterization are provided in this MS thesis. The main objective of this thesis was to investigate the mobilization of the side shear stresses of the two test drilled shafts installed in this unique very weak, porous limestone and assess whether load transfer analyses are suitable to predict the observed experimental behavior. The first focus of this study was to evaluate whether existing static methods could reasonably predict the measured ultimate side shear stresses, also referred to as unit shaft resistance. A total of 10 static methods were evaluate and the range of predictions of the unit shaft resistance was found to be very large, highlighting the need to improve our capability of predicting this important design parameter. Furthermore, the measured ultimate side shear stress values at the PR test site were found to be above the upper bound of the range of predicted values using the selected static methods. The higher measured unit shaft resistance values are attributed to limitation of the selected static methods that are solely based on only the intact rock UCS, and do not incorporate other important variables such as the surface roughness of the rock socket walls or stiffness ratio between drilled shaft and surrounding rock mass. The second focus of this MS thesis was to evaluate the ability to capture the axial load transfer mechanisms of the test drilled shafts and the experimental axial load versus settlement curves using load transfer analyses. The load transfer analyses behavior of the axial load tests was simulated using 1D finite element models of the deep foundation and springs using nonlinear T-Z curves to represent the development of the side shear stresses as a function of level of relative movement between the foundation and the rock. The literature review identified two T-Z curves formulations for very weak limestone. One formulation is from McVay and Niraula (2004) who proposed T-Z curves developed from centrifuge tests on simulated Florida limestone. The second formulation is a model developed by Asem and Gardoni (2019) based on a comprehensive database of drilled shaft load tests on very weak to weak rock. These two T-Z formulations were used to predict the experimental load-settlement curves. The predictions using the McVay and Niraula (2004) were much stiffer than the observed behavior. A modified T-Z formulation, based on the Asem and Gardoni (2019) was found to yield the best predictions and exhibit more flexibility because it depends not only on the unit shaft resistance but also on the stiffness or modulus of deformation of the rock mass. The modified load-transfer model was found to be reasonably adequate to predict the measured experimental behavior of the two test drilled shafts installed in the unique, very weak, porous limestone rock from the karst formation in northwest PR.