In the conventional allowable stress design approach for driven piles

the safety factor is highly dependent on the accuracy of pile bearing capacity determination methods. However

the empirical safety factors may not be on a reliability basis. This paper proposes a procedure to investigate the effect of pile bearing capacity determination methods on the safety factors of driven piles

and provides a theoretical basis to verify and support existing empirical safety factor used to account for the effect of pile capacity determination methods. The procedure is formalized in the Bayesian framework. In particular

how the safety factor can be reduced based on on-site dynamic pile tests are addressed. Seven design methods for driven piles are investigated to illustrate the proposed procedure. The results indicate that the required safety factors obtained from this study are consistent with the existing empirical values. The required safety factors can be reduced considerably using more accurate pile capacity determination methods

which depends on design methods

pile capacity determination methods

and the level of pile capacity verification implemented. After sufficient pile capacity determination

the required safety factors for different design methods are not sensitive to the accuracy of the individual design methods.