Investigation of laterally loaded single and group piles' behaviour by numerical methods

The aim of this research is analyzing pile-soil-pile interaction in laterally loaded pile groups. Before pile-soil-pile interaction analysis, single piles' behavior that are under the effect of lateral loads, are analyzed by considering different soil and pile sizes. Therefore for the analysis MPile program is utilized. Four different pile analysis methods are employed in three dimensional numeric analysis. These methods are Cap Model, Cap Soil Interaction Model, Poulos Elastic Model and Plasti-Poulos Model. The pile length change and diameter effect is researched in laterally loaded piles with different soil parameters and it is deduced that in some cases the elongation of pile length has a slight effect on the pile behavior. In addition to that elastic and plastic methods are compared with each other and plastic effect is examined on the lateral load-deformation. In laterally loaded pile groups, a firstly done study is solved by using MPile in order to test the correctness of the program. Then a laterally loaded pile group is solved via Cap and Cap Soil Interaction Model which uses p-y method and Elasto- Plastic Poulos Model and the difference in these methods are discussed. Finally the effect of pile-soil-pile interaction to lateral load displacement behavior is examined in lateral loaded pile groups. From the analysis, it has been deduced that when the piles come closer to each other, pile-soil-pile interaction is decreased and it starts to look like single pile behavior. Moreover it is also concluded that as the distance between piles diminishes, the displacement of the pile group is increased. Key words: Pile-soil-pile interaction, Laterally loaded piles, Laterally loaded pile groups, Laterally loaded pile analysis