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Pile bearing capacity is usually understood as the sum of the bearing capacities of the pile’s base and shaft. Nevertheless, the behaviour of the pile base and shaft can be different, depending on what testing method is used for the evaluation of the bearing capacity. In this paper, three different methods of pipe pile testing are introduced, which make it possible to evaluate the pile base and shaft bearing capacities. On the basis of the tests conducted on a laboratory scale and numerical simulations performed with the finite element method, different approaches to bearing capacity evaluation have been compared. As a result, some similarities and differences between the applied methods are presented.

This work examined a new method of bi-directional static load testing for piles, referencing the Osterberg test. Measurements were taken, on a laboratory scale, using six models of piles driven into a box filled with sand. This method allowed for separate measurements of pile base and pile shaft bearing capacities. Based on the results, the total pile bearing capacity and equivalent Q–s diagrams were estimated. The results obtained show that the structure of the equivalent curve according to Osterberg is a good approximation of the standard Q–s curve obtained from load tests, except for loads close to the limit of bearing capacity (those estimates are also complicated by the inapplicability and ambiguity of a definition of the notion of limit bearing capacity); the equivalent pile capacity in the Osterberg method represents, on average, about 80% of the capacity from standard tests.