The growing demand for infrastructure, coupled with the scarcity of suitable foundation soils, has driven the increased adoption of combined piled raft foundations (CPRFs) in recent years. Despite their widespread application, there remains a knowledge gap concerning the behaviour of CPRFs in cohesive soils. To address this gap, the present study numerically simulates a CPRF using PLAXIS 3D software. The primary objective is to investigate the influence of key parameters such as pile length, pile spacing, and the number of piles on the settlement profile, load distribution and load-bearing performance of small CPRF configurations, ultimately guiding optimized design. An optimized piled raft design is defined by achieving maximum allowable central settlement (MAS) with satisfactory bearing performance for a given raft geometry under uniform loading condition. The results reveal that increasing pile length, spacing, and the number of piles reduces maximum allowable central settlement ratios (MASR) while enhancing the load-bearing capacity of the CPRF system. Additionally, the percentage of load carried by the piles increases with these parameters. The analysis shows that the corner piles experience higher load compared to the central piles. These findings provide valuable guidelines for optimizing the design of CPRF .