EVALUATING THE EFFECT OF LATERAL SOIL MOVEMENT RATE ON THE BEHAVIOR OF PILES IN SAND USING PLAXIS

Abstract

Pile foundations are not only used to support heavy structures and can act in the dual role of carrying the applied load to deeper and strong layers, but also to resist lateral loads generated from many sources as well as earthquake, earth pressure, waves, wind and soil movement due to creeping slop or excavation works. Piles response to external effects is divided into a passive pile and active pile. When the piles are subjected to lateral soil movements, these piles are known as passive piles. On the other hand, active piles referred to a pile subjected to external vertical and/or horizontal force. Soil movement is encountered in practice when piles are placed in an unstable slope, landslides, adjacent to deep excavation, tunnel operation, marginally stable riverbank with high fluctuating water level and also in piles supporting bridge abutment adjacent to approach embankments. PLAXIS 3D 2013 geotechnical finite element package which present 3- dimensional analysis for soil was utilized to build a numerical model of single pile and pile groups in lateral soil movement with different soil movement rates. The model confirmed using previous researches. The model verification shows favorable agreement with the measured horizontal pile deflections and bending moments by choosing appropriate parameters.