Integrity Assessment of Marine Piles for Onshore Bridges based on On-site Inspection

Abstract

The boundary conditions caused by the ocean currents increase the total length of cast-in-place marine piles. The increased pile length is in turn able to generate a moment that is greater than that of the fixed end moment established during the design. As a result, the accidents caused by the collapse of the marine piles are frequent due to the erosion or the large seabed sediment transport at many onshore bridge construction sites. In this study, the health of nonoverturned piles on onshore bridges whose marine piles were overturned during construction was evaluated through on-site inspection, particularly through visual inspection, side scan SONAR, and echo sounding. To verify the pile production accuracy, two of the overturned piles were lifted and inspected.