A natural gas-fueled turbine power plant is being built on the south bank of the Yangtze River, near Nanjing City, China. The project site is located on existing farmland that includes fishing ponds. Subsurface investigations indicated that significant deep soft clay deposits exist in the plant area. To address this situation, prestressed high strength concrete (PHC) piles are being used to support important structures, such as the turbine pedestal. Because of the contingent schedule, the pile lateral capacity was initially developed using the software program LPILE. The pile group for the turbine pedestal was then designed following appropriate procedures in Chinese design codes. Later, however, the pile load test results indicated that the lateral capacity had been greatly overestimated. This paper discusses the reason for this overestimation and presents a methodology to increase lateral capacity. The differences in lateral capacity design between Chinese codes and U.S. practice are also compared and discussed.
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