Buckling analysis of super-long rock-socketed filling piles in soft soil area by element free Galerkin method

In order to discuss the buckling stability of super-long rock-socketed filling piles widely used in bridge engineering in soft soil area such as Dongting Lake, the second stability type was adopted instead of traditional first type, and a newly invented numerical analysis method, i.e. the element-free Galerkin method (EFGM), was introduced to consider the non-concordant deformation and nonlinearity of the pile-soil interface. Then, based on the nonlinear elastic-ideal plastic pile-soil interface model, a nonlinear iterative algorithm was given to analyze the pile-soil interaction, and a program for buckling analysis of piles by the EFGM (PBAP-EFGM) and arc length method was worked out as well. The application results in an engineering example show that, the shape of pile top load-settlement curve obtained by the program agrees well with the measured one, of which the difference may be caused mainly by those uncertain factors such as possible initial defects of pile shaft and the eccentric loading during the test process. However, the calculated critical load is very close with the measured ultimate load of the test pile, and the corresponding relative error is only 5.6%, far better than the calculated values by linear and nonlinear incremental buckling analysis (with a greater relative error of 37.0% and 15.4% respectively), which also verifies the rationality and feasibility of the present method.