Response of Piles Subjected to Progressive Soil Movement

Abstract

Abstract Model tests were conducted to investigate the behavior of vertically loaded, free head piles undergoing lateral soil movement using an experimental apparatus developed in house. This paper presents ten new tests on an instrumented model pile in dry sand, which provide the profiles of bending moment, shear force and pile deflection along the pile, the development of maximum bending moment Mmax, maximum shear force Tmax, and pile deflection y0 at the ground surface with soil movement. The tests reveal the effects of axial load P (at pile head), the distance between the tested pile and source of free soil movement Sb, sliding depths, and angle of soil movement (via loading angle) on the pile response. For instance, the axial loading P leads to extra bending moment and deflection in the passive pile; the Mmax reduces with increase in Sb; and the Mmax is proportional to the “angle” of soil movement. The elastic solution by Guo and Qin [Guo, W. D., Qin, H. Y., 2010, “Thrust and Bending Moment of Rigid Piles Subjected to Moving Soil,” Can. Geotech. J., Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 180–196] was used to predict the development of Mmax and Tmax observed in the current tests, a boundary element analysis, and an in situ pile test, respectively. It provides satisfactory predictions for all cases against the measured data.