Abstract The downslope movement of sliding soils usually leads to a nonlinear distribution of lateral forces on stabilizing piles in a row. Precise prediction of the lateral forces is of significance to assess the stability of pile-reinforced soil slopes. A simplified pressure-based method is presented for estimating the lateral force distribution on piles embedded in a semi-infinite c–φ inclined soil slope. The soil arching theory was incorporated to calculate the driving forces transferred onto piles after determining the active lateral earth pressure between adjacent piles through the horizontal slice method. Several published experimental and numerical studies were selected to examine the applicability of the proposed method. It is demonstrated that the predicted result is in good agreement with the observed data in terms of both the shape and the magnitude of the distribution of lateral forces. The parametric study further indicates that the distribution of lateral forces along the depth changes from nonlinear to planar as slope angle increases, whereas the other parameters, such as friction angle, soil cohesion, pile spacing and depth of unstable soil layer, mainly influence its magnitude. The proposed method could be employed in the preliminary prediction of response of piles with scarce design parameters.
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