Similitude Derivation of Stabilizing Model Pile in Centrifugal Model Test

Abstract

Similitude design of a model test concerns the size and materials of the model. For the similitude design, the most important factors include not only that the test should simulate well the interaction of soil-pile of the prototype, but also that the model test should reflect well the failure mechanism of the corresponding prototype. In this paper, firstly, the similitude relation between the model pile and the prototype pile in the soil-pile interaction centrifugal modeling is derived by means of analytical equation method. Then, in order to investigate the failure mechanism of stabilizing pile, the physical properties of model materials and the difficulty of making of model pile are taken into consideration. The results show that the failure mechanism of stabilizing pile in the centrifugal model tests can be reflected reasonably.