Numerical Analysis of Laterally Loaded Long Piles in Cohesionless Soil

Ayman Abd-Elhamed,Mohamed Fathy,Khaled M Abdelgaber

doi:10.32604/cmc.2022.021899

Abstract

The capability of piles to withstand horizontal loads is a major design issue. The current research work aims to investigate numerically the responses of laterally loaded piles at working load employing the concept of a beam-on-Winkler-foundation model. The governing differential equation for a laterally loaded pile on elastic subgrade is derived. Based on Legendre-Galerkin method and Runge-Kutta formulas of order four and five, the flexural equation of long piles embedded in homogeneous sandy soils with modulus of subgrade reaction linearly variable with depth is solved for both free- and fixed-headed piles. Mathematica, as one of the world's leading computational software, was employed for the implementation of solutions. The proposed numerical techniques provide the responses for the entire pile length under the applied lateral load. The utilized numerical approaches are validated against experimental and analytical results of previously published works showing a more accurate estimation of the response of laterally loaded piles. Therefore, the proposed approaches can maintain both mathematical simplicity and comparable accuracy with the experimental results.

Highlights

Pile foundations are frequently used, especially in weaker soils, to support various structures subjected to lateral loads such as high-rise buildings, communication towers, wind turbines, earthretaining structures, bridges, tanks and offshore structures
The proposed numerical techniques in the current study provide a better approach for structural designers to solve for the displacement and bending moment responses of laterally loaded piles
Legendre-Galerkin method and Runge-Kutta formulas of order four and five were employed to solve the flexural equation of long piles embedded in homogeneous cohesionless soil with a modulus of subgrade reaction increases linearly with depth

Summary

Introduction

Pile foundations are frequently used, especially in weaker soils, to support various structures subjected to lateral loads such as high-rise buildings, communication towers, wind turbines, earthretaining structures, bridges, tanks and offshore structures. Several methods have been proposed for designing and analysis of piles subjected to lateral loads including the subgrade reaction approach [3], the p-y approach [4,5], the finite element approach [6], the finite difference. Different techniques have been proposed to analyze the behaviour of piles frequently subjected to lateral loads in sandy soil with different boundary conditions at their ends, including power series solution [11], finite element method [12], and finite difference method [3,13]. Further fullscale tests were performed to explore the behavior of laterally loaded piles either in sand [14] or in clay [15] Numerical simulations considering both theoretical predictions and experimental validations are the common powerful tools of analysis in the field of geotechnical engineering complex applications

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