Comparison of Number of Piles Required for Deep Foundation Design Using Indian and European Codes

Abstract

Pile work contributes as a major component of material consumption in civil engineering domain of a refinery, a petrochemical complex construction or an industrial project in general. Most of the current project sites often require use of piles as foundation due to the poor soil conditions and poorer bearing capacities. The current practice in Indian refinery sector is to design the piles and their arrangements according to the provisions of Indian standards. Indian standard adopts the “working stress design approach” which has been in extensive use till date for the design of gamut of foundations, viz. isolated footings, raft foundations, pile foundations, etc. with a global factor of safety. However, internationally a new design concept, limit state design approach as per Eurocode has gained popularity in recent times. Eurocodes are a well-established benchmark for many countries all over the world. Eurocodes lay emphasis on soil–ground interactions, besides just superstructure and explain the design of soil–ground interactions in such a way that limit states may be reached for pile groups as well. Recent designs of pile and pile group arrangement in Indian parlance using the European standards have shown encouraging signs of savings in terms of reduced number of piles required. This paper presents a comparative study of the number of piles required for a pipe rack structure in a refinery complex using Indian standard and Eurocodes. This paper further gives the quantitative idea of possible savings in materials that can be attained using the advanced code and attempts to explore the reason for the same. The possible savings in carbon footprint during refinery construction due to this material saving have also been attempted.