6 th I nternational Conference on Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering

1-4 November 2015

Christchurch, New Zealand

Simple Formulation of the Ultimate Lateral Resistance of Single Pile

in Cohesive Soils based on Active Pile Length

M. R. Aglipay1, K. Konagai 2, T. Kiyota 3, H. Kyokawa 4

ABSTRACT

Flexible piles subjected to a lateral load deform prominently near the ground surface and the
pile deformation decreases with increasing depth. This significant deformation is called the
active pile length, L a . During a nonlinear event, a soil wedge is pushed up in the passive
region along this active pile length. To investigate if the active pile length can describe the
ultimate side soil reaction, a numerical simulation of single pile embedded in homogeneous
cohesive soil is done using the 3D OpenSeesPL. The elasto-plastic behavior of the soil is
modeled using the Von Mises multi surface kinematic plasticity model while the pile is
modeled using elastic beam-column elements. From the results of the rigorous solution, a
simplified method to define the ultimate lateral resistance of single piles in cohesive soils
using the key parameter, L a , is presented. This method provides more practical approach in
the seismic design and assessment of piles.

Introduction

Piles are usually used as deep foundations for important structures, or structures supported by
weak soils. These piles are most susceptible to external lateral loads like seismic motions.
With the mere presence of two elements, i.e., the soil and the pile, the lateral resistance of
piles is generally governed by the soil-pile interaction. The movements of grouped piles and
their side soils are mutually dependent such that when the piles’ heads are laterally loaded,
they are deformed relative to the deformation of the surrounding soil and vice versa.

For flexible piles commonly used in engineering practice, the deformation of a vertical beam
is observed to be significantly prominent in the region near the ground surface and decreases
with increasing depth (Konagai 2003). This region of significant deformation is defined as
the active pile length, L a , where the piles can be described as a cantilever beam assuming
fixity at the negligible deformation point. In this study, the point of negligible deformation is
defined as the 3% of the maximum pile head deformation. This L a, noting the stiffness of the
pile relative to the surrounding soil, is a parameter reflective of the soil-pile interaction. A
number of cases varying the pile and soil stiffness was numerically simulated to establish the
relationship between the active pile length and the ratio of the pile stiffness to the soil
stiffness.

During nonlinear events like large seismic excitations, a soil wedge is pushed up along L a .
This soil wedge along L a is indicative of the ultimate lateral resistance. Thus, it can be
inferred that the ultimate lateral pile resistance can be described by a simple parameter

1
PhD Student, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, [email protected]
2
Professor, Grad School of Urban Innovation, Yokohama National Univ, Yokohama, Japan, [email protected]
3
Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, [email protected]
4
Kajima Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, [email protected]
reflective of the soil pile interaction. Many researches (Elgamal et. al. 2009, Lu et. al 2006,
Wang et. al. 2014, etc.) on soil pile interactions have been done especially in the advent of
high computing powers where rigorous solutions can be done for any complex soil-pile
configuration. However, it is still warranted especially in the engineering practice that simple
yet high caliber solutions can be made available. Therefore, a simplified expression using L a
as a key parameter to describe the ultimate lateral resistance of single pile embedded in
cohesive soil is presented for more practical approach in the seismic design and assessment of
piles.

Numerical Simulation

The finite element analyses were performed using a freeware called the OpenSeesPL
developed by Lu et al. (2006) from University of California, San Diego. This software is
specifically developed to simulate response of laterally loaded foundation system in three
dimension. The following are the description of the geometrical configuration of the soil-pile
configuration considered in this study.

Geometry of the Model

In view of symmetry, a half mesh is studied as shown in Figure 1. A single end bearing pile
of length, L p =30m is embedded in the soil box with a 0.03m protrusion above the ground
surface to apply the lateral load. The dimensions of the soil box is 158.76m in the
longitudinal side (x-axis), 79.38m in the transverse direction (y-axis) and 31m in depth (z-
axis). The difference in the colors of the soil medium indicates the difference in the vertical
meshing. The orange layer of the soil indicates finer meshing to have a better simulation near
the ground surface. On the other hand, the blue layer indicates coarser meshing compared to
the blue layer. In total, the soil-pile configuration model has 3536 (soil) and 231(pile and
links) nodes and 2900 (soil) and 230 (pile and links) elements. The following boundary
conditions are implemented: (1) the bottom of the domain is fixed in all axes (x, y and z axis),
(2) the nodes in the side planes and the back are fixed in the x and y axes and free in the z
axis and (3) to model the full mesh 3D solution, the nodes in the plane of symmetry are fixed
in y-axis and free in x and z axis.

Legend
soil
pile
links 158.757m
25m 6m

Figure 1. Soil-Pile Configuration

Soil Modeling

In OpenSeesPL, the elasto-plastic behavior of the undrained clay is captured using Prevost
model (Prevost 1977). This model uses the multi-surface kinematic plasticity concept (Mroz
1967) incorporating the von Mises yield surface as seen in Figure 2.

In this case, the plasticity is observed only in the deviatoric stress-strain relationship. The
volumetric stress-strain is not affected by the deviatoric responses and exhibits a linear elastic
relationship. Simply put, the constitutive model used simulates the shear behavior of clay, in
monotonic or cyclic, independent of the confinement change. The backbone of the shear
stress-strain curves of the clay material is modeled using the hyperbolic relationship
(Kondner 1963) defined by two parameters: (1) initial tangent modulus, E i and (2) ultimate
shear strength, (σ 1 -σ 3 ) ult . This hyperbolic relationship is given by the following equation:

ε (1)
σ1 − σ 3 =
1 ε
+
Ei (σ 1 − σ 3 ) ult

OpenSeesPL uses the user-defined PressureIndependMultiYield for clay and has a pre-
defined material properties for clays as soft, medium and stiff.

(a) Von Mises multi-surface (b) Hysteretic shear response

Figure 2. Von Mises multi surface kinematic plasticity model (after Lu et. al. 2006)

Pile Modeling

In this study, pile in elastic case is considered and uses the element type elasticBeamColumn.
This is based on the beam-column element formulation for elastic case defined by the
following parameters: (1) Young’s modulus (2) poison ratio and (3) moment of inertia.
Detailed information can be found in the OpenSees User Manual (Mazzoni et al. 2006).

Cases Considered

In this study, a number of static pushover tests for single end bearing pile embedded in a
homogeneous clay were simulated. The static pushover test was conducted using a
displacement control at pile head, where it is considered fixed. A lateral displacement is
applied at the pile head at an increment of 0.001m until it reaches the final load of 1.0m. A
total of 21 cases are considered in this study. The diameter of a circular pile was varied from
0.30 to 1.2m, while the Young’s modulus of the pile, E p , varied from 30GPa to 200GPa.
Table 1 summarizes the different geometric and material properties of the piles used in the
simulation study. These piles are embedded in soft, medium and stiff clay. The material
parameters of the corresponding clay materials are given in Table 2 from the pre-defined
material library of OpenSeesPL.
 Table 1. Pile parameters considered

Diameter, d (m) Young’s modulus, E p (GPa) Pile stiffness, EI p (N-m2)

0.30 30 1.193 E + 07
0.50 30 9.204 E + 07
0.70 30 3.536 E + 08
1.00 30 1.473 E + 09
1.20 30 3.054 E + 09
Diameter, d (m) Young’s modulus, E p (GPa) Pile stiffness, EI p (N-m2)
0.30 200 7.952 E + 07
0.50 200 6.136 E + 08

Table 2. Soil parameters considered

Undrained Shear Unit

Bulk modulus Permeability
Clay Cohesion c u modulus G max weight, γ
B (MPa) coeff. (m/s)
(kPa) (MPa) (kN/m3)
Soft 18 13 65 1.0 E-09 11.57
Medium 37 60 300 1.0 E-09 13.55
Stiff 75 150 750 1.0 E-09 16.01

Active Pile Length

In this study, L a is defined from the ground surface down to the point where the deformation
is equal to 3% of the pile head deformation. Along this length, the pile can be described as a
cantilever beam, assuming fixity for the deeper region of negligible deformation. In common
engineering practice, Chang’s formula (Chang 1959) given by Equation 2 is used to define
the characteristic length, Lo = 1 / β .

kh d
β =4 (2)
4 EI p

where in Equation 2, k h : coefficient of horizontal subgrade reaction, d: pile diameter or width

and EI p : pile stiffness. However, we note that in k h d is not an inherent property of the soil.
Thus, Konagai (2003) proposed a more rational expression given in Equation 3. This
expression considers the stiffness of the pile relative to the surrounding soil.

EI p
Lo = 4 (3)
G

where EI p : pile stiffness and G: soil shear modulus. The L a is closely investigated on by
varying the parameters directly affecting it such as the pile stiffness and soil stiffness. This is
assumed to exhibit a proportional relationship with L a , ( La = aLo ). The progressive L a for the
single piles of various EI p embedded in soft, medium and stiff clay are shown in Figure 3.
The y-axis indicates the depth from the ground surface. In this figure, it can be observed that
for the same surrounding soil, the higher the EI p , the longer the L a . Conversely, for the same
EI p , the ones embedded in softer clay has longer L a than the ones embedded in stiff clay.
Differences lie in the rate of change of L a with pile head displacements depending on the EI p
and corresponding surrounding soil medium. To provide a clear coupled action of the pile
stiffness and soil stiffness on the active pile length, L o from Equation 3 must be defined. The
shear modulus is derived accounting for the shear degradation from the increase in the shear
strain,γ, due to progressive pile head deformation. The derived L o is plotted against L a for
various applied pile head displacements, particularly at 0.01m, 0.1m, 0.5m and 1.0m, as seen
in Figure 4. It can be seen that there is indeed a linear relationship between L o and L a for
various pile head displacements. Therefore from Figure 4, L a =α L o can be established.

0 0

Active Pile Length, La

Active Pile Length, La

-5 -5

-10 -10

-15 -15
d=0.30m Ep=30GPa d=0.50m Ep=30GPa
-20 d=0.30m Ep=30GPa d=0.50m Ep=30GPa -20 d=0.70m Ep=30GPa d=1.00m Ep=30GPa
d=0.70m Ep=30GPa d=1.00m Ep=30GPa d=1.20m Ep=30GPa d=0.30m Ep=200GPa
-25 d=1.20m Ep=30GPa d=0.30m Ep=200GPa -25 d=0.50m Ep=200GPa
d=0.50m Ep=200GPa
-30 -30
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Lateral Pile Head Displacement, uy (m) Lateral Pile Head Displacement, uy (m)

(a) Piles in soft clay (b) Piles in medium clay

0
Active Pile Length, La

-5

-10

-15
d=0.30m Ep=30GPa d=0.50m Ep=30GPa
-20 d=0.70m Ep=30GPa d=1.00m Ep=30GPa
d=1.20m Ep=30GPa d=0.30m Ep=200GPa
-25 d=0.50m Ep=200GPa

-30
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Lateral Pile Head Displacement, uy (m)

(c) Piles in stiff clay

Figure 3. Progressive active pile lengths for pile of different stiffness embedded in (a) soft
clay, (b) medium clay and (c) stiff clay

25 18
uy=0.01m uy=0.01m uy=0.1m
uy=0.1m 16 uy=0.15m uy=0.2m
20 uy=0.5m uy=0.25m uy=0.3m
Active Pile Length, La

14
Active Pile Length, La

uy=1.0m uy=0.35m uy=0.4m

Linear (uy=0.01m) 12 uy=0.5m uy=0.75m
R² = 0.9495 uy=1.0m
15 Linear (uy=0.1m)
Linear (uy=0.5m) R² = 0.9514 10
Linear (uy=1.0m) 8
10
6
R² = 0.9553
R² = 0.9562 4
5
2
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 0 1 2 3 4 5
Lo = (EI/G)0.25 Lo=(EI/Gmax)0.25

Figure 4. Relationship of L o to L a Figure 5. Relationship of initial L o to L a

However, it is noted that in the field, G max is easily obtained. To relate this to L a , Figure 5 is
plotted. It can be seen that there is also a linear relationship with L a and initial L o (L a =α L o ),
where alpha is just the slope dependent on the applied lateral pile head displacement.
 Ultimate Lateral Pile Resistance

The numerical simulations show that upon application of the lateral load, a soil wedge is
progressively formed at the passive region. In Figure 6, the lateral force at the pile head is
given by the black line. The pile resistance based on the L a at 0.1m (1%<γ<5%) pile head
displacement is given by the blue line, where the soil wedge is deemed to be formed. The
side soil reaction is derived by the difference of the lateral force at the pile head and the pile
resistance. It can be observed from the side soil reaction curve, a constant line appears. This
is where the ultimate lateral pile reaction is derived for all cases.

Otani (2006) investigated the failure pattern for a laterally loaded pile embedded in medium
dense sand using an X-ray. His findings show that the shape of the failure wedge is a conic
shape contrary to the conventional pyramidal wedge type. This study attempts to relate this
conic shape to the mobilized failure wedge for laterally loaded piles embedded in cohesive
soil. Since the conic wedge is mobilized along the L a , the height of the cone is defined as L a .

40000 2r 2πr
35000 Lateral Force, P
Lateral Load (kN)

Pile Resistance, La @ uy=0.10m

30000 Side Soil Resistance
25000
20000
h
15000
La
10000
5000
0 Volume of Cone: Lateral Surface Area:
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
Lateral Pile Head Deformation, uy (m)
1
Volcone = (1/3)πr2La Alat = (1/2)h(2πr)

Figure 6. Load deformation curve Figure 7. Conic Properties

P vo

W
La c
θ

Figure 8. Soil Deformation Mechanism

Based on the energy rate equations, the governing equation is given by Equation 4. The rate
of total external work done is seen at the left hand side resulting from the lateral load, P and
the lifting of soil weight in the wedge, W. The right hand side of Equation 4 is the total
internal energy rate dissipation at the failure surface given by C which is due to the cohesion
at the failure surface.

P ⋅ vo sin θ − W ⋅ vo cosθ = C ⋅ vo cosθ (4)

In Equation 4, v o : the virtual velocity which can be later on cancelled and θ: half angle of the
dip of the failure surface with respect to the vertical pile and dependent upon r. However, the
wedge that is discussed herein is a 3D upside-down cone, and the average 𝜃𝜃 for all directions,
which is to be larger than that for 2D case, can be less dependent on r. In light of this
geometric feature of the 3D cone, the dependence of equivalent cosθ and sinθ in Equation 4
for a 3D failure wedge are tentatively ignored and designated as C 0 and C 1 , hereafter, for the
sake of simple discussion for predominant parameter to describe ultimate side soil reaction.
The weight of the soil wedge is given by the product of the unit weight of the soil and the
volume of the conic soil wedge while C is given by the product of the undrained cohesion
and the lateral surface area of the conic wedge. Substituting the conic properties to Equation
4, the ultimate force 𝑃𝑃 from the side-soil wedge is thus given by

P = C 0 ⋅ γ ⋅ Vcone + C1 ⋅ c u Alat (5)

where, V cone = (1/3)πr2L a , r: radius of the cone, c u : undrained cohesion and γ:unit weight.
A lat be approximated by:

Alat ≅ a ⋅ 2πrLa (6)

Exactly speaking, the coefficient 𝛼𝛼 depending on 𝛾𝛾 and lies within the range from 1 to
1 + (2r / La ) 2 , and thus should be larger than 1. However the actual circumference of the
cone’s base is not completely a circle, and can be smaller than 2πr. Thus for the sake of
simplicity, Equation 5 is rewritten here as:

1 2
P = Co ⋅γ πr L a + C1 ⋅ c u 2πrLa (7)
3

From the stress ratio distribution in the passive region as seen in Figure 9, the area of plastic
formation given by the red color for piles of different diameters embedded in the same type
of clay is almost the same. But the area of plastic formation for the same type of pile
increases with increasing strength of clay. Thus, it is assumed that r is proportional to the
soil properties: undrained cohesion and unit weight as expressed by Equation 8

cu
r =λ (8)
γ

where λ is the proportional constant. Substituting Equation 8 in Equation 7, it is noted that

2
La cu
P∝ (9)
γ

Based on Equation 9, the lateral force is a function of the active pile length, undrained
cohesion and unit weight. Thus, these parameters are plotted against the ultimate lateral pile
resistance as seen in Figure 10.
 d = 0.50m d = 1.00m d = 1.20m
Ep = 30GPa Ep = 30GPa Ep = 30GPa

soft clay
d = 0.50m d = 1.00m d = 1.20m
Ep = 30GPa

medium clay
Ep = 30GPa Ep = 30GPa

d = 0.50m d = 1.00m d = 1.20m

Ep = 30GPa Ep = 30GPa Ep = 30GPa

stiff clay

Figure 9. Stress ratio distribution for piles with diameter, d=0.5, 1.0 and 1.2m embedded in
soft, medium and stiff clay in XY plane (top view)

35000
y = 11.567x
30000
R² = 0.9578
25000
Pultimate

20000
15000
10000 soft clay
medium clay
5000 stiff clay
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
cu2La/γ
Figure 10. Relationship of P ultimate with L a ,c u and γ

It can be seen that there is a high correlation between these parameters and the ultimate
lateral pile resistance. There is a unique line for all the cases considered in this study varying
the pile stiffness and surrounding soil. The ultimate lateral pile resistance can be empirically
described by the following expression

c u2
Pultimate = 3.68π La
γ
(10)

Conclusions

For flexible piles, the active pile length is established to be governed by the stiffness of the
pile relative to the surrounding soil stiffness. Particularly, there is a linear relationship with
(EI p /G)0.25 for various lateral pile head displacements. This L a can be easily defined by the
initial L o dependent on the maximum shear modulus and applying the slope of the line
dependent on the applied pile head displacement. The failure wedge in the passive region can
be described by a conic shape. Though a more thoughtful derivation is needed to show the
predominant parameters, the numerical simulations show the potential of the idea of the use
of active pile length together with other important soil parameters such as the soil unit weight
and the cohesion to estimate the ultimate lateral resistance of the side soil. The verification of
this idea shall be presented in the future papers. This simplified expression for the ultimate
lateral pile resistance for flexible single end bearing piles can be useful for more practical
approach in the seismic and assessment of piles. This idea can be extended to a more
complicated scenario i.e. non-homogeneous soil, for group piles, etc.

Acknowledgments

The author expresses thanks to the Japanese government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) for
making this study possible through their financial support.

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