Driveability of composite piles

Deep foundation has historically involved the use of traditional materials such as concrete, steel and timber. However, these materials suffered from strength degradation and its repair cost is significant especially if installed in harsh marine environment. A relatively new trend in piling industry is to use composites as substitute material. Composites present a novel solution without most of the traditional materials' shortcomings. The basic advantages of composites among other construction materials include lightweight, high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, chemical and environmental resistance, and low maintenance cost. Apart from the mentioned advantages, composite materials face impediments since they do not have a long track record of use in piling system. To partially address the aforementioned barrier, this paper presents information on the driveability of composite piles which is one of the first steps toward understanding its behaviour during driving. Additionally, experimental impact test result conducted by the authors on fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) hollow pile is also discussed in this study. Result from the impact test on laminate confirms that longitudinal specimen exhibited higher energy absorption capacity compared to the transverse specimens. The performed axial impact test on pultruded section revealed that degradation of stiffness increases with increasing incident energies and impact cycles. Generally, literature showed limited information on full-scale driving test and needed field tests to carefully assess and verify the driving performance of the composite piles to be used in developing reliable design procedures.