Soil behaviour around the stub abutment of an integral bridge and buried piles in the contraction state

Abstract

The change in the deck length under temperature load affects the upper part of integral bridge abutments and causes abutments rotation. The deck contraction makes the abutment move away from the backfill and causes a failure wedge. To prevent the failure wedge, a new method has been proposed. In this method, the inhibition of integral bridges under contraction is done by cables connected from each abutment to the buried piles outside the bridge along the abutments. In the analysis, the behaviour of soil around the abutment and buried piles is an important parameter which has a great influence on the results. In this paper, the soil behaviour around a laterally loaded stub abutment and buried piles was studied on laboratory stub abutment models using the PIV (particle image velocimetry) method. The PIV analysis was carried out to obtain the deformation pattern and shear strains of the soil around the stub abutment and buried piles. The effects of piles number and soil – pile interaction on the soil deformation pattern were investigated. The results showed that the use of buried piles connected by the cable avoided creating a failure wedge in the backfill.