Behavior of vertical and batter piles under lateral, uplift and combined loads in non-cohesive soil

Piles and pile groups are subjected to various kinds of loadings in onshore and offshore structures. To simulate field conditions, different kinds of loadings, i.e., lateral, uplift and combined loading, were applied on vertical and batter pile foundation. Mild steel piles having outer diameter 22 mm and inner diameter 20 mm were used. Various tests were performed on single piles having different length-to-diameter ratio, viz. 18, 28 and 38. Modeling of the pile was done using the physical scaling laws. Different angles, i.e., 15°, 25° and 35°, were considered for negative and positive batter piles. The mild steel tank was designed to avoid the effect of boundary conditions. It was observed from the experiments that a negative batter pile with 35° angle and L / D ratio 38 provides maximum load-carrying capacity in every loading condition. The load-carrying capacity of piles under combined loading condition, i.e., lateral as well as uplift load, is found to be more as compared to monotonic loads, i.e., lateral or uplift loads. Further, an ANN model was developed for predicting the behavior of pile under various loading conditions. It is observed that the deflection values obtained from the ANN model and the experiment are in close agreement.