Pile foundations are extensively used in the construction of various types of superstructures,including tall buildings, bridges, freeways and offshore structures. A fully constrained tipembedment such as a rock-socket offers an attractive solution for achieving significant tipresistance and improving the load-carrying capability of the foundation element. In profiles withvery soft surficial soil, rock-socketing often provides the only reliable source of axial and lateralresistance. In preparation of a large-scale testing program on rock-socketed piles at UC Irvine(UCI) geared towards studying the magnitude of shear amplification at the rock-soil boundary ofpile foundations, a pre-test model-scale experiment was executed in the UCI StructuralLaboratory. The objective of the model-scale experiment was to iterate and validate the testsetup, study the influence of important boundary conditions, assess instrumentation techniquesand sensor placement, and to gain preliminary insight into the small-scale specimen nonlinearity.In addition, this model-scale study provides ample opportunity to compare lateralperformance parameters with analytically predicted lateral load behavior using traditional soilresistance functions and limit state analyses and explore new techniques for the derivation of soilresistance functions.
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