PileAXL

Standard window-style dialogs, push buttons, drop menus, list boxes, EXCEL-like data grid cells, slide bars, radio buttons, check boxes and toolbars can be accessed in the program; Analysis methods for driven piles include (1) American Petroleum Institute Method (API RP2A), (2) U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Method (USACE), (3) Imperial College Pile Method (ICP) and (4) User-defined method;​ Analysis methods for bored piles or drilled shafts include (1) FHWA Clay, (2) FHWA Sand, (3) FHWA Gravelly Sand, (4) FHWA Gravels, (5) FHWA Rational Beta Method (Kulhawy and Chen 2007) and (5) General rock based on the recommendations from FHWA publication entitled "Drilled Shafts: Construction Procedures and LRFD Design Methods" (FHWA-NHI-10-016); ​ Ultimate end bearing resistance within the layered soils is determined by Meyerhof (1976)’s approach with considering the influence effects of upper and lower soil layers; Automatic generation of nonlinear T-Z curves and Q-W curves for various soil types such as cohesive soils, cohesionless soils and rocks according to the pile installation type; Different pile Cross Section Types such as circular section, rectangular section, steel H-section, steel pipe section, octagonal section and user-defined section can be selected by the user. Plugged and unplugged options are available to the steel H-section and steel pipe section; Resistance factors can be specified by the users for ultimate shaft resistance (compression), ultimate shaft resistance (tension) and ultimate end bearing resistance for the design to be consistent with the current widely-used limit state design concept. Additional reduction factor can be applied to the internal shaft resistance of the unplugged steel pipe section to consider the effects of driving disturbance; A well-designed Result Output Dialog is provided for the user to view all the analysis results graphically. Switching among different results is very straightforward. Detailed analysis results are presented in EXCEL-like format and can be easily selected and copied into the third-party program such as EXCEL for further processing; ​An Interactive Graphical Interface for pile and soil layer geometry input is provided. Important changes in the input data such as pile length, the number of soil layers, soil layer name, soil layer thickness, soil layer colour, analysis model type, water table position, certain soil parameters and pile loading will be automatically updated in the main graph. It is very convenient for the user to visually view the input change; and Offshore driven pile foundations can be analysed by the API method, ICP Method, Fugro Method and UWA method included in PileAXL program. The user can benefit from the comprehensive options provided by PileAXL for offshore pile foundation design. Negative skin friction option is available in PileAXL for the consideration of negative skin friction effects on the pile axial capacity and settlement. ​