Malpensa Airport - Italy

Redevelopment and expansion of Malpensa Airport, Milan called for the installation of large diameter bored piles as part of the foundation works. Pile diameters of up to 1800mm were required with working loads of 15MN. A test load of 22.5MN on the production piles made top-down static load testing an expensive option. Soft soils would have necessitated the need for kentledge reaction, but with unstable soils consisting of sands and gravel, a deep cut-off and small test area, would have been impractical.
O-cell Installation at Malpensa Airport

Bi-directional load testing was performed on a working pile where top down static load testing would have proved to be difficult and expensive. Geotechnical information was obtained to confirm the design parameters used and to give confidence in the pile design.

With a small testing footprint and no surface loading required in soft ground conditions, bi-directional static load testing proved to be the perfect solution to the testing needs on this site.

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Malpensa Airport - Italy