Modelling of Clay Behaviour in Pile Loading Test Using One-Gravity Small-Scale Physical Model

Abstract

The observations and tests under small scale in 1-gravity condition are intended to obtain a comparative behavior of a model and prototype of geotechnical case by imposing the scaling relations. Simulations to represent a related structure, sub-soil and failure mechanism need to be prepared prior to do observations in this modeling. To simulate pile loading test (PLT) on clay, the following models of: clay, pile, driving simulation and procedure of PLT based on ASTM D4410 were set-up. The PLT in reduced scale environment was then followed by performing normal practice of full scale PLT in original clay site. Load settlement curves obtained from both “pile loading test” in small and full scale simulations showed closely good agreement. Further observation and investigation on simulation of pile loading test in clay revealed that modeling the following: clay sub-soil resulted in new properties of clay, em=ep+λLn(N) which reflects stress scaling factor, N, pile size and pile driving hammer need scaling factor n and n3 respectively whereas PLT time needs time scaling factor, tp (n)0.5.