Geoenvironmental Approach for Helical Piles

Environmentally considerations are now almost the major problem in civil engineering activities because of affecting on environment. Piles or deep foundations and penetrative ground improvement are common choices in many big structures. The mentioned choices mainly, damage environment. Helical piles as a geoenvironmental case, is introduced to substitute usual piles. Due to special configuration of helical piles and light weight, the piles expend fewer raw materials and have less bad effect in nature. Therefore, these piles are studied to investigate their environment advantages and bearing capacity. Over ten small-scale model piles were made of hallow galvanized steel pipes and were tested in coastal sand via a new apparatus for physical modeling, named Frustum Confining Vessel (FCV). Helical model piles had 32 mm shaft diameter and 89 mm helices diameter (all model piles had a length of 75 cm). Because of the FCV configuration, it can simulate field conditions as well, thus, the results are more reliable. The results indicated the helical piles capacity is considerable enough to use it as an alternative for usual piles.