The 18th Pfahl Symposium took place at the TU Braunschweig on 20 and 21 February 2025. With almost 400 participants from industry and academia, the event was sold out. The pile symposium has established itself as the central meeting of the German-speaking geotechnical pile community. The presentations are therefore always accompanied by intensive technical discussions.

Alexander Kochnev and Hauke Zachert from the Institute of Geotechnics at TU Darmstadt took part and each gave a presentation. Hauke Zachert also had the honour of chairing a session.

Hauke Zachert presented the results of the Blind Prediction Contest , which were eagerly awaited and intensively discussed by the participants. The BPC revealed how often the predictions do not adequately reflect the actual pile behaviour. You can find the full article here (opens in new tab) .

Alexander Kochnev presented the results of large-scale tests on multidimensionally highly cyclically loaded anchor piles for foundations of floating offshore wind turbines. These tests were carried out as part of the EU project GEOLAB together with the French partners of Université Grenoble Alpes (Grenoble) and Université Gustave Eiffel (Nantes & Paris). You can access article here (opens in new tab) .

You can download the complete proceedings of the Pfahl Symposium here.