SYMPOSIA PAPER Published: 29 July 2019
STP161120170162

Impulse Response Measurement for Pile Integrity Testing Using a Shaker as Excitation Source and Regularized Deconvolution

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Concrete piles are used as a foundation when the load capacity of the soil is insufficient or when the sustainable soil is found at a higher depth. Among other impact factors, the load capacity depends on the pile’s integrity and length. Therefore, verifying these parameters using adequate methods is recommended. The most common procedure is the low-strain integrity test using the hammer impact method. Developed and established in the 1970s, this method uses stress waves induced by a hammer impact at the pile head and its reflections at impedance changes (length, defects, geometry changes) to estimate the length and defect locations. Although this method is widely used due to its low cost and fast conduction in situ, one disadvantage is its inability to classify the exact type of defect, i.e., crack, change in diameter, or concrete quality. Furthermore, very long and slender piles are difficult to test and small defects cannot be detected. In addition, it is necessary for the test engineer to hold a high level of experience and expertise in this field. The European Union–funded PileInspect project (2013–2016) aimed to compensate for these disadvantages by using a low-cost shaker as the excitation source and sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms for damage detection (higher-order spectra method). Because this technology lacks the capacity to localize damages and verify the pile length, an additional impulse response (IR) measurement technique was developed using vibrational excitation and regularized deconvolution to extract the depth information from the data in a similar manner as the hammer method. Simulations and subsequent experiments conducted at a test facility on 90-cm-diameter bored piles 11 m in length and containing cracks at approximately 4 m below the pile head confirmed the capacity to determine the pile length. Damage diagnosis and localization, however, are more difficult than for the hammer method. Although the damaged piles could be distinguished from the intact piles, in a blind test, this method might lead to misinterpretations caused by perturbations arising from the deconvolution process. The results also indicated that the low-cost shaker used for these measurements might be inappropriate for the transferal of sufficient energy. Although the IR method cannot compensate for the disadvantages of the hammer method by itself, it may enable the possibility of using long and fully controllable and repeatable signals (chirp, synthetic impacts, even noise, etc.) for pile integrity testing in the future.

Author Information

Ertel, Jens-Peter
Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing BAM, Berlin, DE
Niederleithinger, Ernst
Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing BAM, Berlin, DE
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Developed by Committee: D18
Pages: 184–204
DOI: 10.1520/STP161120170162
ISBN-EB: 978-0-8031-7668-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-8031-7667-6