Analyzing pile groups is tedious, error prone work, especially for large numbers of piles. Digital Canal’s Pile Cap Analysis and Design can turn this task into a simple matter of entering the loads and the pile locations and pressing “Perform Analysis”. However, Digital Canal’s Pile Cap Analysis & Design can do more than just analyze the pile group—it can design the cap’s thickness and reinforcement as well! Check out these specs:

• Analyze design pile caps for a column with up to 200 piles.
• The column’s loads can include axial loads and biaxial bending moments for dead, live and wind loads.
• The weight of the pile cap is automatically included in the analysis.
• Pile group analysis is made using a linear strain model. In the case of wind loads, moment directionality (positive or negative sign) is accounted for automatically.
• The centroid of the pile group is computed and displayed in the report.
• Design the pile cap for shear, flexure and temperature & shrink using ACI 318-2005. Shear design includes one way, two way and deep beam shear.
• Reinforcement design includes suggested bar size & spacing and material quantities.
• A minimum thickness is input and incremented to satisfy shear requirements.
• Output includes a list of minimum and maximum loads on each pile. If the user inputted allowable working load for a pile is exceeded, the user is flagged.
• The user is warned if the inputted cap does not have sufficient edge distance.
• The column can be either circular or rectangular.
• Units include US Customary and metric.

Digital Canal’s Pile Cap Analysis & Design has been in use for nearly 20 years; during that time it has been used around the country to design many hundreds of pile caps. The program is sophisticated enough for most designs but does not require an advanced degree to operate. In fact, learning to operate the program takes about 15 minutes.