A new teaching concept for axially loaded piles

It is a common feature of teaching methodologies to divide the content into modules for lectures or book sections. However, these divisions are often not intrinsic to the real problems. Students, and consequently future professionals, may fail to bridge these artificial gaps, bringing into practice a mind-set organized by educational divisions instead of the functional demands of each problem. An example of this is the division between capacity and deformability of axially loaded piles, which follows the approach of regulatory manuals dividing stability and serviceability calculations. The real underlying mechanism is that pile resistance, both on the toe and along the shaft, is only mobilized through a certain amount of displacements. This is widely recognized and often mentioned in basic literature and general educational sources. However, it still features as a side note and is not directly incorporated in the calculation methodologies. This paper evaluates an instruction methodology to tackle this issue. Pile behavior is presented within a flexible framework that directly incorporates the concept of displacement dependent mobilized capacity. Through a straightforward formulation, based on the load-transfer method, general features, such as pile compressibility, residual loads and negative friction can be explicitly dealt with. Therefore, even though these different aspects may be presented individually, they can all be pulled together for an assessment of their interdependent effects on the pile response to axial loads.