Traditional methodology for pile integrity evaluation usually adopts fuzzy qualitative indicators and the engineering experience of technicians to roughly estimate the integrity category of a pile, which includes many uncertainties and heavily subjective factors. Therefore, based on an analytical model for the vibration of pile and an ontology-based approach, this paper describes the development of an integrated evaluation system that can make reasonable evaluations of pile integrity where specific measured reflective wave curves are provided. First, a semi-analytical solution for the velocity response of pile with defects at the pile head was derived by analytical methodology, and then the intrinsic relationships between the quantitative indicators of pile defects and the characteristic parameters of velocity response curves were obtained according to the propagation law of elastic wave and the numerical fitting method. On this basis, a prototypical ontology-based evaluation system, ontology of pile integrity evaluation (OntoPIE), with a new ontology framework of leverage knowledge modelling was developed to create an easy-to-use tool for quantitative identification of pile defects and qualitative evaluation of pile integrity by combining ontology and semantic web rule language (SWRL) rules. A case study was also conducted to show how the developed framework can be used to demonstrate its practicability and scientific feasibility. The accuracy of the framework will be verified by comparing the quantitative indicators of pile defects inferred by OntoPIE with the preset defect indicators through designed examples.

This article proposes a new analytical model for the low-strain integrity detection of a pipe pile embedded in a viscoelastic soil layer with radial inhomogeneity by extending Novak’s plane-strain model and transfer method of complex stiffness to consider viscous-type damping. The analytical solutions for the complex impedance, the velocity admittance and the reflected wave signal of velocity at the pile head are also derived. Extensive parametric analyses are further conducted to investigate the effects of the disturbance degree and the disturbance range of surrounding soil due to construction operation on the velocity admittance and the reflected wave signal of velocity at the pile head. It is demonstrated that the proposed model and the obtained solutions can provide extensive scope of application, compared with the relevant existing solutions.