ABSTRACT

The Menard pressuremeter (Menard, 1955) has been used in France as a design tool for more than three decades where foundations for public works have been designed almost exclusively according to the pressuremeter method. The amount of data amassed as well as the valuable experience acquired since then, led the French Highway Authorities to publish a code of practice in 1985 (LCPC-SETRA) related to recommendations for deep foundations design. This code was since updated and extended to shallow foundations (MELT, 1993) and this paper focuses on the relevance of these (new) design recommendations in the case of deep foundations. The pressuremeter method will be presented in detail and results corresponding to full scale tests on piles undertaken at different French sites (see Azizi & Frank, 1990) will be discussed in conjunction with the predictions based on the pressuremeter method.

INTRODUCTION

This paper aims at presenting the essential features of the theory of the expansion of cylindrical cavities and reviewing the practical aspects of pressuremeter test and its use for (deep) foundation design. Since its invention by Menard in the mid-fifties, the pressuremeter has proved to be very reliable. Moreover, the continuous developments related to its use, both on the analysis side (Gibson and Anderson, 1961, Baguelin et al., 1978) and on the technical side (Jézéquel, 1968, Baguelin et aI., 1972–74, Wroth and Huges, 1973) have contributed to the pressuremeter becoming a widely used tool that can provide representative soil parameters. In what follows, the main theoretical aspects related to the expansion test in clays and in sands are presented, followed by different design rules in the case of deep foundations. Finally, results corresponding to full scale tests on piles will be compared to the predictions derived from the pressuremeter method.

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