Foundation settlements must be estimated with great care for buildings, towers, power plants, and similar high-cost
structures. Except for occasional happy coincidences, soil settlement computations are only best estimates of the
deformation to expect when a load is applied. During settlement the soil transitions from the current body (or self-weight)
stress state to a new one under the additional applied load [1]. The statistical accumulation of movements in the direction of
interest is the settlement. A major factor that greatly complicates foundation design is that the soil parameters have to be
obtained on construction site prior the project calculation.
The prediction of pile settlements can be achieved as a sum of a pile heel settlement and elastic deformation of pile.
Settlement analysis plays an important role in building foundation, even though only few modern buildings collapse from
excessive settlements, it is not uncommon for a partial collapse or a localized failure in a structural member to occur [8].
Excessive settlement and differential movement can cause distortion and cracking in structures [9] especially for rotary
machines which are particularly sensitive to bearing misalignment. In other words, the adequacy of the adopted state-of-theart
design method may greatly reduce the risk factor of settlement problems without unduly raising foundation costs.
The scope of this work is to design the pile foundation that is required for gas and steam turbine equipment on the site of
the Elektrenai power plant, Lithuania.
The current work consists of four parts:
1. To assess immediate settlement employing analytical Bowles method
2. To assess immediate settlement employing three methods, such as Schmertmann, EN 1997-2 and NEN 6743
3. To assess immediate settlement employing finite element method that is applied in Plaxis 3D Foundation package
4. To compare the experimental results obtained from static load pile test with the computation results obtained by
employing above mentioned methods
In this work, the deep pile foundation was designed to sustain loads from gas and steam turbine equipment on the site of
the Elektrenai power plant, Lithuania. In the design of a pile foundation, the required pile length was estimated based on the
load from the superstructure, allowable stress in the pile material, and the in situ soil properties Soil properties were
estimated from site investigation and soil exploration program according to Lithuanian regulations. Investigation data were
based on cone penetration and dynamic penetration tests, boreholes, excavations and soil as well as laboratory
investigations. From these data, four geological layers were generalized that were applied in design of pile foundation.
Pile settlement analysis estimated that total settlement value was 15.6 mm, including 2.1 mm settlements of elastic
deformation of pile from vertical compressive loads. In general, pile settlement should not be more than