PLENARY SESSION: THEME-1
DRILLED PILES, PIERS AND CAISSONS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2014
9:30 AM TO 12:30 PM
Prof. Deepankar Choudhury, IIT Bombay, India
Abstract: Activities of ISSMGE’s Technical Committee on Deep Foundations (TC 212)
In the year 2009, the former president of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and
Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) (www.issmge.org), Prof. Jean Louis Briaud had classified the
various technical committees dealing with technical activities of ISSMGE around the world into three
major groups. The technical group dealing with application oriented geotechnical engineering
problems was again sub-divided into various technical committees, one of which is the Technical
Committee TC 212, which deals with ‘Deep Foundations’. Before 2009, this technical committee of
ISSMGE TC 212 on ‘Deep Foundations’ was known as TC 18. In 2009, Prof. Rolf Katzenbach of
Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, had taken the duty of the Chairman of TC 212 and the
present author has taken the duty of the Secretary of TC 212. The members of TC 212 are spread
over 35 countries of the world with more than 45 members and corresponding members. In the
terms of reference of TC 212, the major activities like bringing out technical reports/manuals for
good, relevant and new practices on ‘Deep Foundations’ were proposed. As an outcome of the
same, the first of it’s kind the “ISSMGE Combined Pile-Raft Foundation (CPRF) Guideline” as design
manual was published by TC 212 in 2013. The cover page of the same is shown in Figure 1. CPRF is
one of the most recent technologies on ‘Deep Foundations’, which has been accepted worldwide as
a sustainable foundation solution system for super high rise buildings, like Burj Khalifa, Kingdom
Tower etc. In this presentation, the details of development of CPRF Design Guideline with emphasis
on the need for developing other similar guidelines will be described. Also the other activities like
special publication of journal issue by TC 212 and holding several international conferences with
meetings of members to bring out the need for more research and practice in the area of ‘Deep
Foundations’ will be elaborated.