Modulus and stiffness of laterally loaded single free headed pile in stratified soil

Abstract

Laterally loaded piles gained its attention when structures like transform towers, offshore structures etc., met huge horizontal loads. Initially, to study the behaviour of laterally loaded piles, homogeneous soil is assumed; whereas in reality the soil stratum would be stratified/ multi-layer soil with various consistency and relative density. Considering this real field situation, an 1g experimental investigation is carried out on a single pile embedded in layered soil by varying the number of layers with respect to the length of the pile. With a sand layer on top and in-between, it increases the lateral capacity of the pile. The main soil-structure interaction parameters are modulus and stiffness factor, the modulus of the homogenous sand layer is very high when compared to the clay layer sandwiched between the sand layer.

Keywords

• lateral-load
• single-pile
• multi-layer
• modulus
• stiffness ratio