Drilled shafts have been used on a limited scale for many years as an alternative to driven piles in a variety of foundation problems. However, uncertainty about the behavior of the drilled shaft has forestalled widespread adoption. The subject package, by Dr. Lymon C. Reese of the University of Texas, is intended for use by bridge engineers, geotechnical engineers, and builders of pile foundations. The manual contains rational procedures and practical guidelines for the design and construction of drilled shaft foundations. Volume I presents a rational design procedure for drilled shafts under axial loading and includes guidelines on construction methods, inspection, load testing, specifications, and cost estimates. Volume II presents alternative methods for computing the response of the shaft to lateral loading and presents the structural design of the shaft for axial and/or lateral loading.

Drilled shafts have been used on a limited scale for many years as an alternative to driven piles in a variety of foundation problems. However, uncertainty about the behavior of the drilled shaft has forestalled widespread adoption. The subject package, by Dr. Lymon C. Reese of the University of Texas, is intended for use by bridge engineers, geotechnical engineers, and builders of pile foundations. The manual contains rational procedures and practical guidelines for the design and construction of drilled shaft foundations. Volume I presents a rational design procedure for drilled shafts under axial loading and includes guidelines on construction methods, inspection, load testing, specifications, and cost estimates. Volume II presents alternative methods for computing the response of the shaft to lateral loading and presents the structural design of the shaft for axial and/or lateral loading.

Drilled shafts socketed into rock are widely used as foundations for bridges and other important structures. Rock-socketed drilled shafts are also used to stabilize a landslide. The main loads applied on the drilled shafts are axial compressive or uplift loads as well as lateral loads with accompanying moments. Although there exist several analysis and design methods especially for rock-socketed drilled shafts under lateral loading, these methods were developed with assumptions without actual validations with field load test results. Some of the methods have been found to provide unsafe designs when compared to recently available field test data. Therefore, there is a need to develop a more rational design approach for laterally loaded drilled shafts socketed in rock. A hyperbolic non-linear p-y criterion for rock is developed in this study that can be used in conjunction with existing computer programs, such as COM624P, LPILE, and FBPIER, to predict the deflection, moment, and shear responses of a shaft under the applied lateral loads. Considerations for the effects of joints and discontinuities on the rock mass modulus and strength are included in the p-y criterion. Evaluations based on comparisons between the predicted and measured responses of full-scale lateral load tests on fully instrumented drilled shafts have shown the applicability of the proposed p-y criterion and the associated methods for determining the required input of rock parameters. In addition to the development of a hyperbolic p-y criterion for rock, a method for predicting lateral capacities of drilled shafts in rock and/or soils is developed for assessing the safety margin of the designed shafts against the design loads. A computer program LCPILE is developed using VC++ to facilitate computations. An elastic solution based on a variational approach is also developed for determining drilled shaft elastic deflection due to applied lateral loads in a two-layer soil layer system. The computational algorithm was coded in a Mathematical file for easy application. Finally, Briaud's method for deriving p-y curves of rock from pressuremeter or dilatometer test results is evaluated using available field test data. A modification to the Briaud's method is recommended for applications in rocks.