Numerical analysis of the performance of pile cap on a single pile for a lateral bearing capacity in layered soil

Abstract

Deep underground infrastructure is booming technology in developing countries, and these construction techniques are mostly used in developed countries at present. Pile foundation among many types of deep structures, it is significantly researched and built to sustain and transfer loads from superstructures to deep soil, in either case, the load from the superstructure is very high or the soil at shallow depth is too weak. Piles are subjected to axial, horizontal, momentary, and combined loading systems as a single pile or pile group system connected to the reinforced pile cap on top of the pile to share or transfer loads through the wall and tip to the surrounding soil. Along with elastic solid pile-pile cap characteristics of materials, a limited number of numerical and analytical studies are published even merely on a homogeneous soil placement of the pile cap model. However, The soil’s natural deposit at a significant site may not always be found homogeneous on which pile-caps and piles are placed. To fill the gap of an intricated multi-physics soil-structure interaction problems, successive analysis is incurred to be proliferated. The study presented a numerical analysis of the influence of the pile cap on the single laterally loaded pile, while the embedding of the pile cap varied on the layered soil profile. The standard linear static numerical analysis software ABAQUS was used to model 3D pile cap-pile and layered soil with subjected lateral load and relevant boundary conditions. The result of the analysis was plotted varying the embedding of the pile cap on clay overlaid sand and sand overlaid clay interchangeably taking into consideration other influencing parameters (pile capsize and vertical load). The increase in pile cap embedment on clay overlaid sand slightly increases the lateral resistance of the pile cap for the first few increments and small non-linear variation for further embedding from the analysis has resulted. However, the performance of the pile cap for lateral load resistance was significantly increased as the depth of embedding of the pile cap is increased on sand overlaid clay. Besides, the size of the pile cap has a direct proportion for lateral resistance, and the vertical load exerted on a pile cap has not had a significant influence. The study comprehensively emphasized the interaction of piles with simple soil physics problems, but multi-soil physics problems with pile interaction should be analyzed for future study.