Behaviour of Laterally Loaded Flexible Piles in Soft Clay

摘要

Behaviour of laterally loaded pile (LLP) requires accurate description for nonlinear performance of interaction between pile and the supporting soil. The encountered soil at East of Port-Said region is soft clay and extends down to more than fifty meters. In this study, available soil reports are reinterpreted to evaluate the required soil parameters. Concrete piles with different diameters are studied. Broms method is utilized to evaluate the ultimate lateral load (P U ) and maximum lateral ground deflection (y gmax .). Comparative study between different methods such as P-y method, non-dimension method (NDM) and finite element method (FEM) using Hardening Soil Model (HSM undrained) is accomplished to obtain LLP capacity. The results showed that PU (Broms method) used at this study as reference load to compare between other methodsequals about485D 2 (kN),the average maximum bending moment for all methods equals about 1364D 2.91 (kN.m) at ultimate load. The ultimate value (P U ) of the lateral load reached at the maximum lateral deflection (y gmax ) isabout 7.5% of the pile diameter. Considering creep, the increase in percentage of (y gmax ) due to long term condition compared with short term ranges from 188% to 273% while the increase in percentage in maximum B.M. ranges from 31% to 57% according to pile diameter. Presence of pile cap relative to free head pilehave a significant effect inreducing the maximum lateral deflection by about 38% and reducing the maximum bending moment by 41.75%.