Quality Control Measures Prior to Pouring of Concrete for Deep Foundations

Parthasarathy C R, Nandhagopal A R, Srinivas N, and Soumik Ghosal, at Sarathy Geotech & Engineering Services, Bengaluru. present the methods to understand the processes involved during installation of bored cast-in-situ piles using two of the latest equipment from Pile Dynamics Inc. (PDI).

The installation of bored cast-in-situ piles generally involves a four-step process starting with boring at pile location, lowering of the prepared steel reinforcement, flushing of the borehole, and finally concreting. During this process, an understanding of the borehole with regards to its cross-section along the depth, verticality, and the sediments or sludge at the bottom of the borehole is necessary. Casting concrete without understanding these points will cause issues such as overconsumption of concrete, soft toe, unintended rake of the pile, etc, which, in turn, will affect the design strength and cost of casting of the pile. This affects the project costings and design on a major scale when the number of deep foundations adopted are high. Therefore, it is important to understand the profile of the pile borehole and bottom cleanliness.