The objective of this investigation was to study the behavior of deep pile caps and the ultimate load-carrying capacity. Four 1/10 scaled models of nine-pile caps were cast and tested on vertical loads to failure. The destruction shapes of pile caps, the correlation between load and displacement, and the internal stresses were analyzed systematical-ly. The results demonstrated that the failures of all the four models are resulted from punching shear; the internal flow of the forces in nine-pile caps can be approximated by "strut-and-fie" model. Furthermore, the failure loads of these spec-imens were predicted by some of the present design methods and the calculated results were compared with the experi-mental loads. The comparative results also indicated that the "strut-and-tie" model is a more reasonable design method for deep pile caps design.