Analysis of laterally loaded piles with rectangular cross sections embedded in layered soil (original) (raw)

An analysis is developed to determine the response of laterally loaded rectangular piles in layered elastic media. The differential equations governing the displacements of the pile-soil system are derived using variational principles. Closed-form solutions of pile deflection, the slope of the deflected curve, the bending moment and the shear force profiles can be obtained by this method for the entire pile length. The input parameters needed for the analysis are the pile geometry and the elastic constants of the soil and pile. The new analysis allows insights into the lateral load response of square, rectangular and circular piles and how they compare. the p-y curves to match the actual load-displacement results . The p-y curves are given as input to a finite difference or a finite element analysis (FEA) of the pile (the pile is assumed to behave as an Euler-Bernoulli beam), and the lateral pile deflection is obtained as a function of the applied load . However, because the p-y curves are developed from back-fitting the results of numerical modelling to match field results, the curves are site specific and empirical. These curves do not explicitly take into account the three-dimensional (3D) resistive mechanism of soil surrounding the pile.