Numerical investigation of the ultimate lateral resistance of piles in soft clay

The paper presents a numerical study on the undrained lateral response of a single, free-head, reinforced concrete pile in soft clays. Soil conditions simulating normally consolidated clays are examined undrained shear strength increasing with depth--and the pile-soil interaction under static lateral loading is analyzed. The nonlinear p-y curves proposed in literature for soft clays are imported into a beam-on-nonlinear-Winkler-foundation simulation in order to predict the pile head lateral load--displacement curve and the distribution of the horizontal displacement and bending moment along the pile. The striking differences among these methods require further investigation via 3D finite element analyses. The determination of the ultimate soil resistance Pult from the results of the finite element analyses aims at providing the estimation of a range of values for the ultimate soil resistance coefficient Np with depth and the comparison of the derived values to the corresponding ones proposed by existing methodologies.