Design and Lesson-Learnt of the Eco-Friendly Bamboo Pile Foundation in Soft Soil—A Case Study in Patimban Deep Seaport

The Patimban Port Development project aims to build a man-made island about 1 km offshore of the Patimban Coast with a breakwater that was proposed to resist the wave actions and thus facilitate activities in the port basin. A pile raft using local natural bamboo was designed and constructed to reinforce the foundation of the breakwater underlying a very soft and complex soil of Java Island. This paper describes the design method and selection process of the bamboo pile foundation, which does not exist in most national standards and practical guidelines. Various technical issues, including numerical FEM analysis arose during the design of the breakwater, which was successfully completed in 2021, are detailed in this paper.