Taking the strain

Software To Simulate A Low Strain Pile Integrity Test (Pit) Has Been Developed by Pile Dynamics as a shareware package. According to the company, the program is ideal for training as well as carrying out checks during the design stage and evaluating results from on-site testing.

The system allows users to enter the pile shape, soil layer properties and characteristics of the low strain hammer impact, including point of impact. The program uses this data to calculate the velocity reflections that a PIT test under such conditions would generate and plots them against both time and pile length. The program's display also shows acceleration and displacement data, along with a slow motion animated display of the wave transmission and reflections through the pile.