Combining reliability and costs in axial pile design

Abstract

Nowadays, social concerns, such as the sustainability and the economy, and also the new regulation design codes are imposing geotechnical engineers to adjust the design methodologies. The new design methodologies should be reliability-based and provide more rational designs that should also be economic and sustainable. On this matter, this work presents a combination of the reliability-based analyses with a cost-effect study in pile foundation design. The mail goal is to match the needs for a particular problem and adequate the efforts to gather the information necessary to achieve a certain reliability level and decrease the chances of additional costs and/or other implications due to unforeseen ground conditions or pile capacity. An example is provided to demonstrate the use of such methodology both in the site investigation stage and the pile design stage.