1943–2023: 80 Years of Research and Practice for Pile Foundations

In 1943, Karl Terzaghi published his famous book “Theoretical Soil Mechanics”, with only few pages dedicated to pile foundations. Today, 80 years later, thousands of research papers and textbooks are proof of significant advances made in this field. It is clearly impossible to attempt a complete coverage of the matter in this keynote paper; accordingly, it was decided to concentrate on some selected topics believed to be timely, relevant and possibly ‘ready for use’ into the current practice.