Modeling of Pile-Soil Interaction in Laterally Loaded Pile Groups Embedded in Linear Elastic Soil Layers

Abstract

This study proposes a new method to obtain the lateral response of pile groups by incorporating the pile group effect in layered soils. When a pile is loaded laterally, it creates a zone of influence in the direction of loading. In a pile group, each pile placed in the influence zone of prior piles is exposed to extra loads due to the load transfers from other piles. This mechanism results in a group effect which causes each pile in the group to have a different deflection curve compared to that of an identical isolated single pile under the same load. This study starts with a mathematical approach to model the interaction of two piles and then extends it to pile groups. The governing differential equation of a pile deflection problem is modified to take the pile-soil-pile interaction into account and solved analytically for each pile while the soil parameters and displacement fields around each pile are obtained numerically using the finite difference method written in Fortran language. The model captures the additional pile deflections induced by the group effects in pile groups and the results match well with the results of the existing methods, especially the finite element method.