Calculation method for the effect of pile head action on foundation piles of irregularly arranged tower cranes

In engineering construction, tower crane foundations are sometimes combined with the main foundation, using a permanent temporary combination design. There may be asymmetrically arranged pile foundations with multiple pile diameters and eccentric loads in this situation. Focusing on this type of pile foundation, a theoretical calculation formula for the pile top effect was proposed. ABAQUS was applied to conduct finite element simulation calculations on actual engineering examples to verify the accuracy and universality of the proposed theoretical formula. The results indicate that the calculation method for pile top effect of group pile foundations in existing codes is a special case of the method proposed in this paper, and the proposed method has a broader application scope. The average error of directly applying the code’s method for calculating the pile head effects of regularly arranged group pile foundations is 18.38%, whereas the average error of the method proposed in this paper is 5.88%. Through error analysis, it is recommended that a safety factor, determined based on the importance of the project and the direction of forces among other factors, should be applied when using the proposed method for engineering calculations. A suggested value range of 1.1 to 1.2 is proposed, offering a balance between safety and economy, and avoiding unnecessary design waste.