1R20. Single Piles and Pile Groups Under Lateral Loading. - LC Reese (Dept of Civil Eng, Univ of Texas, Austin TX) and WF Van Impe (Lab for Soil Mech, Ghent Univ, Ghent, Belgium). Balkema Publ, Rotterdam, Netherlands. 2000. 463 pp. Softcover. ISBN 90-5809-348-9. $45.00. (Hardbound ISBN 90-5809-340-9 $85).
Reviewed by RD Holtz (Dept of Civil Eng, Univ of Washington, PO Box 352700, Seattle WA 98195- 2700).
Many structures commonly founded on piles or groups of piles are required to resist lateral loads, both static and cyclic, in addition to the usual axial loads. Examples include bridges, power transmission structures, overhead signs, offshore platforms, quays, dolphins, and high-rise buildings subjected to wind and seismic loads. Design methods based on limiting equilibrium are quite adequate for estimating maximum or ultimate axial pile loads, but these methods are unable to accurately predict foundation deformations due to anticipated lateral loads. Instead, a method of analysis is required that considers the interaction of the soil and the pile. The field of soil-structure interaction has progressed rapidly in recent years, largely due to developments in digital computers and numerical methods that are necessary to solve complex systems of nonlinear equations. Specifically, the analysis of laterally loaded pile foundations has developed because of the interest of the offshore oil industry, together with a number of well-documented, full-scale instrumented pile load tests.
This is an important book on a complicated subject that until now has not been dealt with particularly well in, for example, most textbooks on foundation engineering. Thus, this book is a welcome addition to the technical literature on foundation engineering. Its comprehensive treatment nicely complements the 1980 text by Poulos and Davis.
Both authors are well qualified. Professor Lymon Reese is one of the leading experts on deep foundations in the US. His co-author, Prof William Van Impe of Belguim, is a distinguished foundation engineer. Thus, their book represents the best combination of US and European research and design practice.
The introductory chapter discusses various design techniques as a way of introducing the concept, which is the basis of the rest of the book. Chapter 2 presents the derivation of the beam-column equations and describes solution methods for the method. A detailed example is also included. Various expressions for curves for soils and weak rock under both static and cyclic loading are presented in Chapter 3, while Chapter 4 discusses some of the pertinent material and geometric characteristics of piles.
Chapters 5 and 6 are the heart of the book. Both present detailed analyses methods for virtually all practical problems of laterally loaded foundations. Chapter 5 describes the analysis of pile groups subjected to inclined and eccentric loads, while Chapter 6 presents the analysis of single piles and groups subjected to active and passive loading. The formats of these two chapters are different. Five has the format of a state-of-the-art review, while six is more in textbook style with numerous examples and solutions.
A number of case studies in which the results of full-scale field tests of instrumented piles at well-documented sites are described in Chapter 7. In Chapter 8, detailed procedures for conducting successful tests on full-size piles are given.
Factors of safety including load and resistance factor design and a bit about probabilistic methods are discussed in Chapter 9. Finally, Chapter 10 presents a brief treatment of two additional design topics such as validation of computations and other topics not discussed previously.
There are ten useful appendices covering topics such as the Broms method, alternative solution methods, comments on the Eurocode, and factor of safety. The book also contains a CD-ROM with student versions of LPILE and GROUP, well known design programs developed by Reese and his students.
The list of references is extensive and up-to-date, with many from the late 1990s; a few mentioned in the text are inadvertently missing from that list. The book is generally well illustrated. Notation, always a source of some confusion in geotechnical writing, is discussed when used in the text, but a separate list of symbols would have been helpful at times. There are a few minor typographical errors.
This reviewer is impressed by the number of worked examples included along with detailed procedures for obtaining soil and pile properties and for carrying out design calculations. This feature will be very useful to practicing foundation engineers and students alike.
Single Piles and Pile Groups under Lateral Loading is strongly recommended for foundation engineers dealing with laterally loaded pile foundations. Both engineers and graduate students will be pleased with its modest cost in paperback.
