Three‐dimensional analysis of single pile response to lateral soil movements

Abstract

Abstract Three‐dimensional finite element analysis was carried out to investigate the behaviour of single piles subjected to lateral soil movements and to determine the ultimate soil pressures acting along the pile shaft. The finite element analysis program ABAQUS was used for the analysis and run on a SUN Workstation. The von Mises constitutive model was employed to model the non‐linear stress–strain soil behaviour. The pile was assumed to have linear elastic behaviour. This was considered to be a reasonable approximation, as the maximum stress developed in the pile did not exceed the yield stress of the concrete pile. The length of the pile is 15 m, the width of the square pile is 1 m. The three‐dimensional finite element mesh used in the analysis was optimized taking into account the computing capacity limitations of the Sun Workstation. The computed ultimate soil pressures agreed well with those from the literature. The shapes of the soil pressure versus soil movement curves and the soil pressure versus the relative soil–pile displacement curves as well as the magnitude of the relative soil–pile displacement to mobilize the ultimate soil pressures were in reasonable agreement with those reported by other researchers. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.