Place piles and pile arrays in mats

Tekla Structural Designer
2021
Tekla Structural Designer

Place piles and pile arrays in mats

A piled mat can either be supported on piles alone, or by a combination of ground springs and piles. Piles can either be placed individually at specific locations within the mat, or an array of equally spaced piles can be created. To place piles in mats and define their inclination, see the following instructions.

Specify if a piled mat is ground bearing

  1. Click the desired mat.
  2. In the Properties window, go to Soil Parameters.
  3. Do one of the following:
    To Do this
    Create a mat supported on piles alone Clear the Use Ground Bearing Springs option.
    Create a mat supported by a combination of ground spring and piles Ensure that the Use Ground Bearing Springs option is selected.

Place an individual pile in a mat

  1. On the Foundations tab, click Pile.
  2. In the Properties window, specify the Pile type:
    1. either by selecting an existing type (if a suitable type has already defined in the Pile catalogue),
    2. or by selecting <New>... ( to add a new pile to the Pile type catalogue)
  3. Click the mat in which you want to place the pile.
  4. Click the pile position in the selected mat.

    Tekla Structural Designer places the pile in the selected position.

Place a pile array in a mat

  1. On the Foundations tab, click Pile Array.
  2. In the Properties window, specify the Pile type:
    1. either by selecting an existing type (if a suitable type has already defined in the Pile catalogue),
    2. or by selecting <New>... ( to add a new pile to the Pile type catalogue)
  3. In the Properties window, adjust spacing and pile direction according to your needs.
    Tip:

    To preview the array, hover the mouse pointer over a mat.

  4. Click an individual mat, or hold down the left mouse button and drag a box around multiple mats.
  5. If necessary, add further mats to the selection by clicking or boxing them.
  6. To create the mat, click the last mat you selected again.

    Tekla Structural Designer places the piles in the mat.

  7. Repeat steps 2–4 to place more piles or press Esc to finish placing piles.

Specify the pile direction of an inclined pile

  1. On the Foundations tab, click Pile.
  2. In the Properties window, do one of the following:

To

Do this

Specify the direction as a vector
  1. Adjust the X and Y components of the vector.

    Tip:

    If you do not want the pile to slope in the global X or Y direction, leave the appropriate value as 0.

  2. Type a negative value in the Z component field.

For example:

To create an inclined pile of 45 degrees in positive X, define the components as follows:

X = 1.0, Y = 0.0, Z = -1.0.

To create an inclined pile of 45 degrees in negative Y, define the components as follows:

X = 0.0, Y = 0.5, Z = -1.0

Specify the direction as an angular measurement
Note:

You can only specify the direction as an angular measurement before the pile is first positioned.

  1. Select the Direction by Angles option.

  2. Define the inclination of the pile from the vertical.

  3. Define the azimuth (the horizontal angle measured clocwise about the positive global Z direction.

  4. If necessary, define the rotation about the longitudinal axis of the pile.

    Note:

    Since the pile is only checked for axial capacity, the rotation angle has no effect on the pile checks. However, you can define the rotation to vary how Tekla Structural Designer displays the moment and shear force values of the pile.

For example:

To create an inclined pile of 45 degrees in positive X, define the angles as follows:

inclination = 45 degrees, azimuth = 90 degrees

To create an inclined pile of 30 degrees in negative Y, define the angles as follows:

inclination = 30 degrees, azimuth = 0.0 degrees

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