Abstract: The timber pile is widely used in the soft soil improvement of small projects because of its low cost, easy material source and convenient construction. The design of composite foundation of timber pile can be estimated according to the composite foundation of cement-material columns. However, the existing design code of pile foundation lacks the values of the coefficient β of the bearing capacity of soil among timber piles and the empirical coefficient of settlement φs, which are important parameters of the composite foundation design and directly affect the safety and cost of the project. In this paper, PLAXIS software is used to simulate the estimating of Chinese fir timber pile composite foundation, and two empirical coefficients can be obtained from the back analysis, which can be used for a reference in the practical engineering application.

Key words: Timber Pile Composite Foundation, Ground Improvement, Mucky Soils, Bearing Capacity Coefficient of Soil between piles, Empirical coefficient of settlement