A Numerical Analysis of 3D Soil Arching in Piled Embankments

Abstract

3D Soil arching has an important influence on the bearing and deformation characteristics of piled reinforced embankments. The effect of the embankment height, pile-cap clear spacing, cohesion and internal friction angle of the embankment fill on pile efficacy was analyzed by numerical method in this paper. The results indicate that the pile efficacy increases gradually during embankment filling and remains nearly unchanged at the end of embankment filling. The ratio of the embankment height to pile-cap clear spacing greatly influence the pile efficacy. The bigger the ratio, the bigger the pile efficacy. The internal friction angle of the fill material also has somewhat influence while the tensile strength of horizontal reinforcement and cohesion of the embankment fill have little effect on the pile efficacy.