The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is one of the most heavily traveled bridges in the world. The east span of the bridge will be replaced due to seismic safety concerns. The new bridge will be founded mostly on large 2.5-meter diameter, approximately 60-to 100-meter long pile foundations. Piles foundations will experience tension loads of up to approximately 80 to 90 MN and compression loads of up to approximately 120 to 140 MN during the design earthquake. The Pile Installation Demonstration Project was conducted as a part of the Seismic Safety Project to evaluate the soil resistance along the pile length, soil plug behavior and the generation of excess pore pressures during driving on the skin and end bearing resistance of the pile, and the soil pile set-up. Also, validity of the procedures used to predict the soil resistance to driving and predicted blow counts were verified with the field observed blow counts and the energy that was delivered to the pile.
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