End bearing capacity of tapered piles in sands using cavity expansion theory

The mechanism of tapered pile through small scale model tests has shown the increment of effective failure zone around the pile tip area with increasing tapering angle. On the load-settlement curve during pile penetration, evidences of model tests showed the increase in end bearing behavior by tapered piles. The analytical spherical cavity expansion theory has been utilized to evaluate the end bearing capacity. In the proposed model, the effect of angle of tapering has been introduced to compute the end bearing capacity of tapered piles. The test results and proposed model show that the tapering angle affects the end bearing resistance comparing with conventional straight piles on different types of sands at different relative densities. The studies incorporating model tests, prototype tests and real type pile tests have been validated and predicted well the proposed model.