Distributed Fiber Optic Monitoring of Non-Uniform Deep Foundation Strain

Distributed Fiber Optic Sensing (DFOS) allows the user to measure continuous strain and temperature profiles along an installed fiber optic cable. The technology has successfully been deployed for a range of geotechnical and geostructural applications, including monitoring of deep foundations This paper presents the results of a fiber optic sensing installation for the measurement of strain in a cast-in-drilled-hole (CIDH) foundation element during a top-down load test. DFOS is particularly suited to strain measurements during pile load testing as it can generate continuous strain profiles along the length of the pile, removing the need for interpolation between point-based strain gauges. The hypothesis is that continuous strain profiles allow insight and understanding of the true, non-idealized pile behavior during loading. A field trial was performed north of Sacramento, California, where a series of load tests were performed on sacrificial piles instrumented with fiber optic strain and temperature sensing cables. The fiber optic instrumentation design consisted of 4 vertical strain cables, as opposed to the more common 1 or 2 cables, allowing for the identification and analysis of non-uniform strain distribution across the pile at single depths. This non-uniform distribution has often been ignored through averaging or discarded as erroneous data, missing potentially real behavior within the pile. The fiber optic data was used to evaluate an independently identified outlier strain gauge reading and confirm the reading as valid, as well as identify bending behavior within the pile which contributed to non-uniform strain measurements across the pile. This research demonstrates the value of the use of DFOS for pile strain measurements and the benefit that it offers over point-based measurements and the interpolation that it necessitates between discrete readings.