Stereo particle image velocimetry measurement of 3D soil deformation around laterally loaded pile in sand

A developed stereo particle image velocimetry(stereo-PIV) system was proposed to measure three-dimensional(3D) soil deformation around a laterally loaded pile in sand.The stereo-PIV technique extended 2D measurement to 3D based on a binocular vision model,where two cameras with a well geometrical setting were utilized to image the same object simultaneously.This system utilized two open software packages and some simple programs in MATLAB,which can easily be adjusted to meet user needs at a low cost.The failure planes form an angle with the horizontal line,which are measured at 27°-29°,approximately three-fourths of the frictional angle of soil.The edge of the strain wedge formed in front of the pile is an arc,which is slightly different from the straight line reported in the literature.The active and passive influence zones are about twice and six times of the diameter of the pile,respectively.The test demonstrates the good performance and feasibility of this stereo-PIV system for more advanced geotechnical testing.

SOIL PILE INTERACTION UNDER STATIC, DYNAMIC AND CYCLIC LATERAL LOADS AND A PROPOSAL OF p-y CURVE FORMULA

In this paper, the studies on soil-pile interaction behaviors in saturated sands under static, dynamic and cyclic lateral loads by model testing are described. By comparing with the field test results for piles in soft sandy clay, a formula of p-y curves based on constitutive relationship of soils applicable for both sandy and soft clays is proposed. Good agreements are obtained in comparison with the field test results performed by other investigators abroad. A p-y hysteresis curve formula based on the modified Masing's doubling criterion is also proposed, and the results are in satisfactory agreement with field test results.

Finite element analysis of couple effect of soil displacement and axial load on single inclined pile

The couple effect of soil displacement and axial load on the single inclined pile in cases of surcharge load and uniform soil movement is discussed in detail with the methods of full-scale field tests and finite element method. Parametric analyses including the degree of inclination and the distance between soil and pile are carried out herein. When the displacement of soil on the left side and right side of a pile is identical, deformation of a vertical pile and an inclined pile is highly close in both cases of surcharge load and uniform soil movement. When the couple effect of soil displacement and axial load occurs, settlement of an inclined pile is greater than that of a vertical pile under the same axial load, and bearing capacity of an inclined pile is smaller than that of a vertical pile. This is quite different from the case when the inclined pile is not affected by soil displacement. For inclined piles, P-Δ effect of axial load would lead to a large increase in bending moment, however, for the vertical pile, P-Δ effect of axial load can be neglected. Although the direction of inclination of piles is reverse, deformation of piles caused by uniform soil movement is totally the same. For the inclined piles discussed herein, bending moment(-8 m to-17 m under the ground) relies heavily on uniform soil movement and does not change during the process of applying axial load. When the thickness of soil is less than the pile length, the greater the thickness of soil, the larger the bending moment at lower part of the inclined pile. When the thickness of soil is larger than the pile length, bending moment at lower part of the inclined pile is zero.

Analytical method of load-transfer of single pile under expansive soil swelling

The elastic differential equations of load-transfer of single pile either with applied loads on pile-top or only under the soil swelling were established,respectively,based on the theory of pile-soil interaction and the shear-deformation method.The derivation of analytic solution to load-transfer for single pile in expansive soil could hereby be obtained by means of superposition principle under expansive soils swelling.The comparison of two engineering examples was made to prove the credibility of the suggested method.The analyzed results show that this analytic solution can achieve high precision with few parameters required,indicating its' simplicity and practicability in engineering application.The employed method can contribute to determining the greatest tension along pile shaft resulting from expansive soils swelling and provide reliable bases for engineering design.The method can be employed to obtain various distributive curves of axial force,settlements and skin friction along the pile shaft with the changes of active depth,vertical movements of the surface and loads of pile-top.

Experimental investigation on seismic behavior of single piles in sandy soil

This paper describes a quasi-static test program featuring lateral cyclic loading on single piles in sandy soil. The tests were conducted on 18 aluminum model piles with different cross sections and lateral load eccentricity ratios, e/d, （e is the lateral load eccentricity and d is the diameter of pile） of 0, 4 and 8, embedded in sand with a relative density of 30% and 70%. The experimental results include lateral load-displacement hysteresis loops, skeleton curves and energy dissipation curves. Lateral capacity, ductility and energy dissipation capacity of single piles under seismic load were evaluated in detail. The lateral capacities and the energy dissipation capacity of piles in dense sand were much higher than in loose sand. When embedded in loose sand, the maximum lateral load and the maximum lateral displacement of piles increased as e/d increased. On the contrary, when embedded in dense sand, the maximum lateral load of piles decreased as e/d increased. Piles with a higher load eccentricity ratio experienced higher energy dissipation capacity than piles with e/d of 0 in both dense and loose sand. At a given level of displacement, piles with circular cross sections provided the best energy dissipation capacity in both loose and dense sand.

Cyclic Lateral Responses of Monopiles Considering the Influence of Pile−Soil Relative Stiffness in Sand

The existing studies have primarily focused on the effect of cyclic load characteristics(namely,cyclic load ratio and amplitude ratio)on cyclic lateral response of monopiles in sand,with little attention paid to the effect of pile−soil relative stiffness(K_(R)).This paper presents a series of 1-g cyclic tests aimed at improving understanding of the cyclic lateral responses of monopiles under different pile−soil systems.These systems are arranged by two model piles with different stiffness,including four different slenderness ratios(pile embedded length,L,normalized by diameter,D)under medium dense sand.The K_(R)-values are calculated by a previously proposed method considering the real soil stress level.The test results show that the lateral accumulation displacement increases significantly with the increment of the K_(R)-value,while the cyclic secant stiffness performs inversely.The maximum pile bending moment increases with the cycle number for the rigid pile−soil system,but shows a decreasing trend in the flexible system.For an uppermost concern,an empirical model is proposed to predict the accumulated displacement of arbitrary pile−soil systems by combining the results from this study with those from previous experimental investigations.The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated by 1-g and centrifuge tests.

A substructure approach for analyzing pile foundation and soil vibrations due to train running over viaduct and its validation

An efficient computational approach based on substructure methodology is proposed to analyze the viaduct-pile foundation-soil dynamic interaction under train loads.Thetrain-viaductsubsystemissolvedusingthe dynamic stiffness integration method,and its accuracy is verified by the existing analytical solution for a moving vehicle on a simply supported beam.For the pile foundation-soil subsystem,the geometric and material properties of piles and soils are assumed to be invariable along the azimuth direction.By introducing the equivalent stiffness of grouped piles,the governing equations of pile foundation-soil interaction are simplified based on Fourier decomposition method,so the three-dimensional problem is decomposedintoseveraltwo-dimensionalaxisymmetricfinite element models.The pile foundation-soil interaction model is verified by field measurements due to shaker loading at pile foundation top.In addition,these two substructures are coupled with the displacement compatibility condition at interface of pier bottom and pile foundation top.Finally,the proposed train-viaduct-pile foundation-soil interaction model was validated by field tests.The results show that the proposed model can predict vibrations of pile foundation and soil accurately,thereby providing a basis for the prediction of pile-soil foundation settlement.The frequency spectra of the vibration in Beijing-Tianjin high-speed railway demonstrated that the main frequencies of the pier top and ground surface are below 100 and 30 Hz,respectively.

Experimental study on DX pile performance in frozen soils under lateral loading

Experiments about working mechanism and mechanical characteristics of the DX model pile foundation under lateral dynamic and static loading were conducted by using a model system of the dynamic frozen soil-pile interaction. The horizontal displacement-force relationship of the pile head and bending moment distribution along the body in frozen soils of different temperatures were discussed. According to test results, both the horizontal disp!acement-force relationship of the DX pile head and bending moment distribution of the DX pile body are smaller than that of equal-diameter piles under same lateral loads. The piles with different plate positions show different displacements and bending moments. This phenomenon is mainly related to the soil temperature and bearing plates locations. Thus, dynamic response analysis of the pile foundation should be taken into account.

Dynamic soil arching in piled embankment under train load of high-speed railways

Piled embankments have many advantages that have been applied in high-speed railway construction engineering.However,the load transfer mechanism of piled embankments,such as soil arching and tension membranes,is still unclear,especially under dynamic loads.To investigate the soil arching and tension membrane under dynamic train loads on high-speed railways,a large-scale piled embankment model test with X-shaped piles as vertical reinforcement was performed,in which twenty-eight earth pressure cells were installed in the piled embankment and an M-shaped wave was adopted to simulate the high-speed railway train load.The results show that dynamic soil arching only occurs when two bogies of a carriage pass by and disappears at other times.The dynamic soil arching and membrane effect are the most significant under the concrete base.The arching height,stress concentration ratio and pile-soil load sharing ratio have a minimal value at 25 Hz.The dynamic soil arching degrades severely at 25 Hz,whose height at 25 Hz is only 0.35 times that at 5 Hz.The arching height fluctuates over a narrow range with increasing loading amplitude.The stress concentration ratio and the pile-soil load sharing ratio increase monotonically as the loading amplitude increases.

Numerical Analysis of Laterally Loaded Long Piles in Cohesionless Soil

The capability of piles to withstand horizontal loads is a major design issue.The current research work aims to investigate numerically the responses of laterally loaded piles at working load employing the concept of a beam-on-Winkler-foundation model.The governing differential equation for a laterally loaded pile on elastic subgrade is derived.Based on LegendreGalerkin method and Runge-Kutta formulas of order four and five,the flexural equation of long piles embedded in homogeneous sandy soils with modulus of subgrade reaction linearly variable with depth is solved for both free-and fixed-headed piles.Mathematica,as one of the world’s leading computational software,was employed for the implementation of solutions.The proposed numerical techniques provide the responses for the entire pile length under the applied lateral load.The utilized numerical approaches are validated against experimental and analytical results of previously published works showing a more accurate estimation of the response of laterally loaded piles.Therefore,the proposed approaches can maintain both mathematical simplicity and comparable accuracy with the experimental results.

Flexural Behavior of Laterally Loaded Tapered Piles in Cohesive Soils

In this paper, the flexural behavior of laterally loaded tapered piles in cohesive soils is investigated. The exact solution for the governing differential equation of the problem is obtained based on the beam-on-elastic foundation approach in which the soil reaction on the pile is related directly to the pile lateral deflection. In this investigation, the modulus of subgrade reactions is assumed to be constant along the pile depth. Parametric study through numerical examples is carried out to prove the validity and accuracy of the obtained results. In general, the derived displacement field can be used to study pile response in multilayered soil profiles by subdividing the pile into a number of elements. It is found that tapered piles show stiffer behavior than that for prismatic ones having the same material volume with an optimum stress distribution along the pile depth. Accordingly, tapered piles are more efficient and economic than those having the same material volume. Verification is also carried out for the obtained results through finite element analysis and the selected number of elements gives a very good agreement for lateral deflection and a larger number of elements is required to obtain better results for bending moment because of moment loss resulting from the lack of shear diagram.

Fully Stressed Piles and Beams in a Winkler's Medium,End-loaded by an Orthogonal Force,and with Optimum Length

A simplified method of designing fully stressed piles and beams with optimum length in a Winkler's medium,end-loaded by an orthogonal force and without any point constraint,is proposed. A numerical algorithm distributing the mass by means of the Fully Stressed Design ( FSD) method and updating the moment by finite elements has been first implemented. The use of the FSD method is in general quite simple,and allows to obtain optimum,or close to the optimum,solutions. After having distributed the mass through the FSD method,the length has been finally optimised by means of a heuristic procedure.

Finite element analysis of effect of soil displacement on bearing capacity of single friction pile

Effect of soil displacement on friction single pile in the cases of tunneling,surcharge load and uniform soil movement was discussed in details with finite element method.Lateral displacement of the pile caused by soil displacement reached about 90% of the total displacement,which means that P-Δ effect of axial load can be neglected.The maximum moment of pile decreased from 159 kN·m to 133 kN·m in the case of surcharge load when the axial load increased from 0 to the ultimate load.When deformation of pile caused by soil displacement is large,axial load applied on pile-head plays the role of reducing the maximum bending moment in concrete pile to some extent.When pile is on one side of the tunnel,soil displacements around the pile are all alike,which means that the soil pressures around the pile do not decrease during tunneling.Therefore,Q-s curve of the pile affected by tunneling is very close to that of pile in static loading test.Bearing capacities of piles influenced by surcharge load and uniform soil movement are 2480 kN and 2630 kN,respectively,which are a little greater than that of the pile in static loading test(2400 kN).Soil pressures along pile increase due to surcharge load and uniform soil movement,and so do the shaft resistances along pile,as a result,when rebars in concrete piles are enough,bearing capacity of pile affected by soil displacement increases compared with that of pile in static loading test.

Stochastic Response Analysis of Piled Offshore Platforms to Earthquake Load

In this paper, using the theory of stochastic analysis of the response to earthquake load, a stochastic analysis method of the response of piled platforms to earthquake load has been established. In the method, the strong ground motion is considered as three dimensional stationary white noise process and the pile-soil interaction and water-structure interaction are considered. The stochastic response of a typical platform to earthquake load has been computed with this method and the results compared with those obtained with the response spectrum analysis method. The comparison shows that the stochastic analysis method of the response of piled platforms to earthquake load is suitable for this kind of analysis.

Numerical simulation on behavior of pile foundations under cyclic axial loads

On the basis of the two dimensional finite element analysis model, the pile foundations' mechanical effect of the rigid pile composite foundation under the dynamic load was researched. Through the research, the development law and deformation property of axial force of pile body, shaft resistance of pile, and cumulative settlement of pile head under vertical cyclic dynamic loads were concluded. Through the comparison and analysis of the test results of dynamic models, the test results of Poulos(1989) and cumulative settlement model of the single pile under cyclic loads were confirmed. Based on the above research, Fortran language was adopted to introduce the soil attenuation factor, the secondary development of relevant modules of ABAQUS was carried out, and the effect of soil attenuation factor on dynamic property of pile-soil was discussed further.

An analytical p-y curve method based on compressive soil pressure model in sand soil

With the high-quality development of urban buildings,higher requirements are come up with for lateral bearing capacity of laterally loaded piles.Consequently,a more accurate analysis to predict the lateral response of the pile within an allowable displacement is an important issue.However,the current p-y curve methods cannot fully take into account the pile-soil interaction,which will lead to a large calculation difference.In this paper,a new analytical p-y curve is established and a finite difference method for determining the lateral response of pile is proposed,which can consider the separation effect of pile-soil interface and the coefficient of circumferential friction resistance.In particular,an analytical expression is developed to determine the compressive soil pressure by dividing the compressive soil pressure into two parts:initial compressive soil pressure and increment of compressive soil pressure.In addition,the relationship between compressive soil pressure and horizontal displacement of the pile is established based on the reasonable assumption.The correctness of the proposed method is verified through four examples.Based on the verified method,a parametric analysis is also conducted to investigate the influences of factors on lateral response of the pile,including internal friction angle,pile length and elastic modulus of pile.

Numerical modeling of centrifuge cyclic lateral pile load experiments

To gain insight into the inelastic behavior of piles, the response of a vertical pile embedded in dry sand and subjected to cyclic lateral loading was studied experimentally in centrifuge tests conducted in Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees. Three types of cyclic loading were applied, two asymmetric and one symmetric with respect to the unloaded pile. An approximately square-root variation of soil stiffness with depth was obtained from indirect in-flight density measurements, laboratory tests on reconstituted samples, and well-established empirical correlations. The tests were simulated using a cyclic nonlinear Winkler spring model, which describes the full range of inelastic phenomena, including separation and re-attachment of the pile from and to the soil. The model consists of three mathematical expressions capable of reproducing a wide variety of monotonic and cyclic experimentalp-y curves. The physical meaning of key model parameters is graphically explained and related to soil behavior. Comparisons with the centrifuge test results demonstrate the general validity of the model and its ability to capture several features of pile-soil interaction, including： soil plastification at an early stage of loading, ＂pinching＂ behavior due to the formation of a relaxation zone around the upper part of the pile, and stiffness and strength changes due to cyclic loading. A comparison of the p-y curves derived from the test results and the proposed model, as well as those from the classical curves of Reese et al. （1974） for sand, is also presented.

Analysis of Interaction Factors between Two Piles in Layered Soils

A rigorous analytical method is presented, which takes into account the pile stiffening effects, using the theory of the transfer matrix-bottom rigidity for calculating the interaction factor between two identical piles in multi-layered soils subjected to vertical loads. Following the technique proposed by Muki and Sternberg, the problem is decomposed into extended soil layers and two fictitious piles characterized respectively by Young's moduli of the layered soils and those of the differences between the piles and the layered soils. The unknown axial forces along fictitious piles are determined by solving a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind, which imposes the compatibility condition that the axial strains of the fictitious piles are equal to those corresponding to the centroidal axes of the extended layered soils. The real pile displacements can be calculated based on the determined fictitious pile forces, and finally, the desired pile interaction factors may be obtained. Selected results from parametrical studies are presented to confirm the validity of the proposed approach and portray the influence of the governing parameters on the pile interaction.

Bearing capacity and mechanical behavior of CFG pile composite foundation

CFG pile (i.e., pile constructed by granular materials of cement, fly-ash and gravel) composite foundation is applied in subsoil treatment widely and successfully. In order to have a further study of this kind of subsoil treatment technology, the influencing factors and calculation methods of the vertical bearing capacity of single CFG pile and the CFG pile composite foundation were discussed respectively. And based on the obtained solutions, effects by the cushion and measurements to reduce negative friction area were analyzed. Moreover, the developing law of settlement and bearing capacity eigenvalue controlled by the material strength with the increase of load were given for the CFG composite foundation. The in-situ static load test was tested for CFG pile. The results of test show that the maximum test load or half of the ultimate load is used from all the points of test, the average bearing capacity eigenvalue of single pile is 390 kN, and slightly greater than the design value of bearing capacity. The bearing capacity eigenvalues of composite foundation for 3 piles are greater than 300 kPa, and the mechanical properties of CFG pile composite foundation are almost identical in the case of the same load and cushion thickness. The pile-soil stress ratio and the load-sharing ratio can be adjusted through setting up cushion thickness.

Experiments of Multi-element Composite Foundation with Steel Pipe Pile and Gravel Pile

A set of serf-developed apparatus for foundation physical model were utilized to conduct model tests of the multi-element composite foundation with a steel pipe pile and several gravel piles. Some load-bearing characteristics of the multi-element Composite foundation, including the curves of foundation settlement, stresses of piles, pile-soil stress ratio, and load-sharing ratio of piles and soil, were obtained to study its working performances in silty sand soil. The experimental results revealed that the multi-element composite foundation with steel pipe pile and gravel pile contributed more than the gravel pile composite foundation in improving the bearing capacity of the silty fine sand.