Analytical Prediction for Piles Used for Slope Stabilization

Abstract

Many unstable slopes are extensively supported by stabilizing piles. Excavation work, rainfall, and earthquakes can cause lateral soil movement, creating forces that act on the stabilizing piles. We present a new simplified method based on the Winkler elastic model for analyzing the response of flexible piles subjected to lateral soil movement in landslides. The new method can analyze cases in which the movement depth profile of the sliding layer is arbitrary by using a two-stage analysis method. First, the free-field soil movement data of the unstable soil mass are fitted by a polynomial spline using the leastsquares method. Then a system of differential equations for flexible piles subjected to lateral soil movement is presented to describe the behavior of the piles embedded in the slope. The formulation considers the soil-pile interaction to derive the analytical solution via a matrix pattern. Finally, the proposed method is verified by comparing the calculated results with those of three published case studies. The results show a good correlation between the calculated and measured responses of flexible stabilizing piles, verifying the reliability of the proposed analytical solution.