Abstract
Marine and harbor structures, wind turbines, bridges, offshore platforms, industrial chimneys, retaining structures etc. can be subjected to significant lateral loads from various sources. Appropriate assessment of the foundations capacity of these structures is thus necessary, especially when these structures are supported by pile groups. The pile group interaction effects under lateral loading have been investigated intensively in past decades, and the most of the conducted studies have considered lateral loading that acts along one of the two orthogonal directions, parallel to the edge of pile group. However, because of the stochastic nature of its source, the horizontal loading on the pile group may have arbitrary direction. The number of studies dealing with the pile groups under arbitrary loading is very limited. The aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of the arbitrary lateral loading on the pile group response, in order to improve (extend) the current design approach for laterally loaded pile groups. Free head, flexible bored piles in sand were analyzed through the extensive numerical study. The main hypothesis of the research is that some critical pile group configurations, loading directions, and soil conditions exist, which can lead to the unsafe structural design. Critical pile positions inside the commonly used pile group configurations are identified with respect to loading directions. The influence of different soil conditions was discussed.
Highlights
In situations where surface soil layers have low bearing capacity, pile foundations are the common foundation solution
The results of the parametric study are presented in the form of pile interaction factors and maximum bending moments for each pile inside the pile group, with respect to loading direction
Full lines denote the results for loose sand, while dashed lines denote the results for dense sand
Summary
In situations where surface soil layers have low bearing capacity, pile foundations are the common foundation solution. Beside the primary function to transfer the vertical loads to the stiff soil layers, pile foundations can be significantly loaded with horizontal (lateral) loads. These loads may originate from different sources, such as: wave, current and ice action, ship impacts, wind pressure, earthquake, earth pressures, traffic acceleration, braking forces, soil displacements etc. The magnitude of lateral load is usually 10–15% of vertical load (and up to 30% in offshore structures) [1]. This fact makes the problem of the laterally loaded pile groups very challenging in marine engineering applications
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