Abstract: As the construction project of port terminals developing seaward, engineering geological conditions get increasingly complex; it faces major challenges to build high-pile wharf on super thick soft clay foundation. Prestressed high-strength (PHC) pipe pile comes to the fore in designing to build the super-long foundation because of the deeply buried bearing stratum. This paper analyses the bearing mechanism and transfer rule of super-long PHC pile through test piles and numerical computation of pile (Its design pile length is 85m.) from a military wharfs. It comes up with the improved hyperbolic model on the base of transfer function method, and calculates vertical static load of test pile. The results are as follows. The calculated values of pile axial force and pile top displacement agree well with measured values, so as to prove that the curves proposed in this paper reflect the actual situation of the interaction between axial loading PHC pipe pile and soil; and it can provide guidance to design super-long PHC pipe pile in soft clay.

Key words: soft clay, super-long PHC pipe pile, vertical bearing mechanism, experimental study