XPILES: An expert system for selecting the appropriate type of piles and pile-driving hammers

Pile foundations have been used for hundreds of years to transfer building loads to appropriate depths. Recently, and especially for the last four decades, many analytical and experimental studies on piles have been performed and many types of piles have been used. The most common function of piles is to make it possible to build in areas where the soil conditions are unfavorable for shallow foundations. In other words, transfer a load that cannot be adequately supported at shallow depths to a depth where adequate support becomes available. The initial selection of a pile foundation represents a well constrained heuristic problem that requires judgment and experience. Artificial intelligence, primarily Expert Systems, is designed to emulate the problem solving process used by human expert. The effort, knowledge, and experience needed for pile selection and construction are well suited problem for expert systems. This paper presents a computer based expert system, XPILES, that advice the user on what type of pile foundations and driving hammers is appropriate for a certain project.