Green Foundations: A Sustainable Approach to Uplift Resistance with Granular Anchor Piles in Comparison to Concrete Piles
摘要
Structures like transmission towers, lightweight buildings, and tower like structures need foundations that can resist compressive as well as tensile forces. Traditional Concrete piles are one such foundation system, but with high cost and skilled labour requirements. Granular Anchor Pile, where the pile is made of granular material along with an anchor plate—anchor rod arrangement and a layer of concrete to provide additional anchorage in some cases, is also used for the same purpose. The use of GAP to resist uplift forces instead of concrete piles will reduce the use of cement and, therefore, lead to lesser carbon emissions. In the current study, numerical analysis is performed to find out the pull-out response of both types of piles in undrained clay soil. A parametric study is carried out to understand the effect of elastic modulus and cohesion of the surrounding soil on the pull-out behaviour of GAP. From the results, it is found that the performance of GAP is comparable to that of concrete piles for particular L/D ratios. Apart from this, the cost analysis of both the piles has also been explored, which showed GAP is substantially economical in comparison to the concrete pile.