Model Tests of Jacked-Pile Penetration into Sand Using Transparent Soil and Incremental Particle Image Velocimetry

This paper presents a series of physical modelling tests of jacked-pile penetration into sand, combining the transparent soil and incremental reliability-guided particle image velocimetry, which provides a non-intrusively internal deformation measurement approach to monitor the internal movement of soil caused by jacked-pile penetration. The difference between the full-model test and the half-model test was analyzed quantitatively for the first time. This paper aims to provide some new insight into the penetration mechanisms of different shapes of pile tip. In addition, the phenomenon of meta-stable sand plug in the process of jacked-pile penetration was studied by means of the method of partial replacement with dyed particles. Experimental evidence has shown that the boundary and interaction effect causes the experimental phenomenon of the half-model test to be different from the true condition. The shape effect of pile tip on the governing penetration mechanisms was discussed, and the disturbance effect of different shapes of pile tip was evaluated and compared based on a large number of model tests and published literatures. The paper intuitively demonstrates that the different penetration mechanism of flat-ended pile and cone-ended pile is mainly due to the formation of the meta-stable sand plug beneath the pile tip.