PILE GROUP SUBJECTED TO COMBINED AXIAL AND LATERAL LOAD

Abstract

Pile groups have been used as a foundation for bridges, transmission towers, offshore structures, and other complex structures. These foundations experience extensive axial and lateral loading, and as a result, they undergo vertical and lateral displacements. Moreover, in the current practice, pile groups have been independently analyzed first for the vertical load to determine their loading capacity and settlement while the lateral load capacity has been normally associated with flexural behavior. The behavior of pile groups subjected to combined loading has been more complex, and its solutions have been largely elusive. Therefore, a novel numerical scheme has been presented to capture the nonlinear pile−soil interaction for (2, 2) pile groups under the application of combined axial and lateral loads. Based upon the numerical scheme, the three-dimensional finite element analysis has been performed on a (2, 2) pile group subjected to combined axial and lateral loads in a soil medium using a computational program. The load-displacement relationship of the (2, 2) pile group has been compared with the numerical results reported in the literature which in turn depend upon the dilation angle and plastic strain of the soil medium.