Innovative Geotechnics

PileGroup Validation - Example 7. Centrifuge lateral load test of a 3x4 pile group in loose sand (Zhang et al. 1999)

This example is based on the full-scale lateral load test of a 3 × 3 pile group reported by Rollins et al. (2005). The piles were spaced at 3.3 diameters centre-to-centre and were driven open-ended into a soil profile consisting of loose to medium-dense sand underlain by clay. Each pile was a steel pipe with an external diameter of 0.324 m and a wall thickness of 9.5 mm, driven to a depth of approximately 11.5 m below the excavated ground surface.

This example is from the analysis of a 3 x 3 pile group, as documented by Pirrello and Poulos (2014). The pile group consists of piles with a diameter of 0.5 m and an individual length of 15 m. The piles are arranged with a spacing of 2 m between each pile, both horizontally and vertically.

This validation example is based on the model test results of a group of piles embedded in sand as reported in Davisson and Salley (1970). A group of six tubular aluminium piles of external diameter of 12.7 mm and wall thickness of 0.8 mm. The piles were embedded in a tank of dry fine sand to a depth of 0.533 m and loaded through a pile cap just above the level of the sand surface. The shear modulus (G) of the sand is proportional to the depth below the sand surface with the

In this analysis mode, the approximate closed form solutions for single piles subject to axial loading (Randolph and Wroth 1978a and 1978b)