Effect of Driving Piles into Soft Clay

This paper describes the results of field and laboratory tests made to determine the extent of the disturbance produced by driving piles into a soft, glacial, lake clay deposit in Detroit, Mich. The results indicate that the natural structure of the clay was appreciably disturbed close to the piles, but that the amount of disturbance did not approach that of complete remolding in the laboratory. At a distance of about two times the diameter of the pile, the clay within a pile group was disturbed only a negligible amount. The process of consolidation initiated by the disturbance was not of a type that would cause settlement of the ground surface.