Lateral response of piles subjected to a combination of spudcan penetration and pile head loads

Abstract

The effects of spudcan penetration on adjacent laterally-loaded piles mainly manifest themselves in the additional lateral shaft loads induced by large soil deformation. This paper presents a procedure to analyze lateral response of piles subjected to a combination of spudcan penetration and pile head loads. First, the Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian technique (CEL) is post-processed and key model parameters are investigated to generate accurate soil displacement profiles during free-field spudcan penetration. Second, the effects of spudcan penetration on the adjacent piles loaded on the pile head are analyzed in two ways: the passive pile method and the offset p-y curve method. Results of an available centrifuge model test is firstly adopted to certify the effectiveness of the procedure in analyzing piles singly loaded by spudcan penetration. Then a combined-loading 1 g model test is conducted to calibrate the procedure. Agreement between the calculated and measured results is found especially with the combination of the CEL FE method and the passive pile method.