THE DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND LOAD TESTING OF STARSOL PILES, PERTH, SCOTLAND

Starsol method of pile construction had only been used on one previous occasion in the UK when the technique was chosen to construct the fou ndations for Hydro Electric plc's new corporate office on Dunkeld Road , Perth, in Scotland, In order to confirm that the piles could be safe ly constructed in the soils beneath the site, a preliminary trial pile was constructed and load tested prior to start of the main piling wor ks. The results of the trial pile indicated that the piles could carry more load than was envisaged at design stage and, therefore, further investigation into the capacity of these piles in the soils beneath th e site was justified. This paper describes the original design of the piles for the site, the construction and testing of the preliminary tr ial pile and investigates the potential reasons for underestimating th e capacity of the piles at the design stage.