The recent expansion of highway network and river improvements accelerate the progress for construction of the embankments on the soft clay grounds. So, a negative friction mobilized on piles due to consolidation of soft ground is closed up as one of the most practical problems in the foundation engineering. For the countermeasure to the negative friction, a pipe pile coating with a bituminous compound on its surface was developed. And it was ascertained that these pipe piles have an excellent ability to reduce the negative friction from the laboratory tests and long-termed field observation tests. Hence, if a steel sheet pile with a bituminous compound is installed at the soft ground, we can easily expect the same effect which may produce a uniformity of consolidation settlement of the ground at the embankment's side and a restraint of the deformation at the backward ground. The present paper first describes the feature of two field observation tests. Then, an application of a finite element analysis previously proposed by the authors to one of the field tests is introduced. Finally, the effectiveness of the steel sheet piles with bituminous compound against a uniform settlement of the embankment and a restraint for the backward subsurface deformation was discussed from consideration of analytical results of some parametric studies used the finite element analysis.
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