Screw piles are efficient anchors to sustain large uplift loads and can be installed with low noise or vibration. Screw piles dimensions are currently increasing, renewing research interest to reduce the installation requirements (torque and crowd or vertical force). The Discrete Element Method (DEM) is an ideal technique to investigate the complex soil behaviour during screw pile installation. Different techniques such as particle upscaling or increase of pile penetration rate have been used to reduce the CPU time to more acceptable durations (e.g. few days or weeks). This paper investigates how such techniques can affect the accuracy of the results and change the installation mechanisms. Results show that maintaining a low particle scaling factor is essential to reproduce the correct mechanism at low pile advancement ratio (AR, defined as the vertical displacement per rotation divided by the helix pitch). The pile overflighting (AR ≤ 1) creates an upwards movement of particles, which in turn creates some tension in the pile. Smaller advancement ratios require smaller particles to accurately capture this effect. Results also show that the pile penetration rate must be maintained relatively low to avoid spurious inertial effects.

螺旋桩是有效的锚，可以承受大的提升载荷，并且可以在低噪音或低振动的情况下进行安装。螺旋桩的尺寸目前正在增加，更新了减少安装要求（扭矩和拥挤或垂直力）的研究兴趣。离散元法 (DEM) 是研究螺旋桩安装过程中复杂土壤行为的理想技术。不同的技术，例如粒子放大或增加桩穿透率，已被用于将 CPU 时间减少到更可接受的持续时间（例如几天或几周）。本文研究了这些技术如何影响结果的准确性并改变安装机制。结果表明，保持低粒子比例因子对于在低桩推进比 (AR, 定义为每转的垂直位移除以螺旋节距）。桩飞越 (AR ≤ 1) 会产生粒子向上运动，从而在桩中产生一定的张力。较小的推进比需要较小的粒子来准确捕捉这种效果。结果还表明，桩穿透率必须保持相对较低，以避免虚假惯性效应。