DFI Magazine September/October 2020 - 72

stakeholders during these difficult times.
The events involve:
1. A conference in the typical in-person
format will occur in November 2021 as our
10th Anniversary Conference at IIT Madras
Chennai, India, involving distinguished
keynote speakers and selected paper
presenters. Authors of abstracts that have
been selected will submit full length
papers, and papers submitted for the
original 2020 event will be carried forward
to DFI-India 2021.
2. A two-day virtual conference will be
held November 19-20, 2020, as a precursor
to the main event in 2021. This online
conference offers a panel discussion,
keynote presentations by international
experts, and some presentations selected
from contributed papers. Sponsors are
sought to support the program and provide
product and service information via
promotional video commercials throughout
the event. See page 47 for more information.
3. Three webinars are being scheduled
prior to the conference from August
through October 2020 as well, and will
feature global industr y expertise.
Registered virtual attendees will receive
access to the webinars at no added cost.
For registration details on webinars,
conference programs, sponsorship
opportunities and more, visit
www.dfi.org/India2020.

CFA Pile Manual
My report in the March/April 2020 issue of
Deep Foundations presented the status of the
CFA pile technology implementation
initiative by DFII. A successful field trial
meant the technical committee led by Sunil
S. Basarkar, Ph.D., Afcons Infrastructure,
and I.V. Anirudhan, Geotechnical
Solutions, prepared the manual for design,
installation and testing of CFA piles.
The manual regarding necessary
guidelines for the design and installation of
CFA piles in India covers the design process
involved for use in cohes ive and
cohesionless soils. Moreover, a step-bystep design example is provided in an
Annexure. Specifications for reinforcement
of materials of construction are covered at
length. Information about equipment
needs and the pile installation procedure
are also among the details provided.
72 * DEEP FOUNDATIONS * SEPT/OCT 2020

CFA piling is only one of a few methods
of forming a cast-in-situ concrete pile; all
other aspects - that is, integrity checks,
load testing, etc. - closely resemble bored
cast-in-situ piles. So, to avoid duplication,
the manual provides references to the
various codes and other standard
publications for load and integrity testing,
materials and other details.
This manual for users in India is based
on first-hand experience by DFII's
technical committee regarding all steps
involved in CFA pile use. It is hoped that
manual users will bank on this experience
to implement CFA pile technology in
appropriate projects and reap the rewards
from this faster, economical piling
alternative. The manual is available on the
homepage at www.dfi-india.org.

Quarterly Newsletter
DFII published its most recent newsletter in
July, containing 16 pages of articles, news
and other items. Included is an interesting
technical article with lead author Jaykumar
Shukla, Ph.D, of Geo Dynamics on " HighPerformance Jack-in Pile Installation,"
involving two case studies of installation of
precast concrete piles. The sites in
Bangladesh had top soils of granular
fills/sandy/silty deposits with underlying
layers of soft clay. This technical alternative
was reported to help successfully overcome
installation difficulties faced earlier with
31.5 in (800 mm) diameter bored cast-insitu piles. The newsletter is available on the
DFII website www.dfi-india.org under the
'Publications' tab.

Dedicated Team
I mentioned earlier the DFII staff's resolve
to keep the chapter relevant, useful and
accessible to the Indian deep foundations
community. A few developments in this
regard are worth mentioning. Our staff,
particularly the young team comprised of
T. S. Mahendran, Mohamed Athif and
Pranav Jha, are extremely dedicated to the
DFII mission and are working above and
beyond their reduced compensation,
especially during the COVID-19 crisis.
They agreed to this because they believe in
DFI as an important organization for
advancing safety and quality in the deep
foundation construction industry of their
country. Their commitment is fed through
the leadership of Director of Operations
G.V. Prasad, the diehard optimist. The
directors of DFII recently inducted Prasad
into the chapter's board as an additional
director, while he maintains his current
roles and responsibilities. With such
passion and commitment from the staff,
and with continued and increased industry
support, I have no doubts of a bright future
for DFI of India.
Based on feedback from nearly 300
regional members, we have also implemented discounted long-term membership categories for members from India of
3- and 6-year terms. Already, some have
opted for these categories. Contact the
DFI of India chapter for more details at
dfiindiaoffice@gmail.com.

Jack-in pile installation

http://www.dfi-india.org http://www.dfi.org/India2020 http://www.dfi-india.org

DFI Magazine September/October 2020

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