OasisLMS

Abstract: Laterally loaded piles are commonly analyzed using one of two approaches. The first is a continuum approach, where both the pile and surrounding soil are typically modeled using the finite element method. Although this method can be highly accurate, it is computationally expensive and time-consuming, which makes it impractical to implement in routine engineering practice. The second approach, the beam-on-Winkler foundation method, employs finite difference techniques to analyze pile and soil responses using established p-y curves. This method is widely favored by many practitioners for its computational efficiency, as it provides results comparable to finite element analyses for most scenarios. However, both approaches generally assume uniform soil properties and neglect the inherent spatial variability of material properties in many soils. Research has demonstrated that accounting for this variability through probabilistic analysis methods that incorporate random fields can lead to more realistic and reliable safety assessments for pile foundations. Despite these advances, commercial finite difference software, such as L-Pile and Allpile, does not support probabilistic analyses with spatially varying soil properties. This paper introduces a computer script that was developed to assign random fields to Allpile input files. The objective of the script is to enable reliability analyses for laterally loaded piles in various soil strata using commonly used commercial finite difference software. A case study is presented to demonstrate the script’ s effectiveness in spatially varying soil material properties. Analysis results were compared to those obtained from a case study by Paiboon (2008) involving more rigorous random nonlinear finite element analyses, and the two methods produced similar results. This demonstrates that the proposed approach not only efficiently accounts for the spatial variability of soil properties but also provides results with a similar level of accuracy to computationally intensive finite element analyses. The script is freely available on GitHub for use by practitioners and researchers.

Dr. DON DOTSON; Adam Hassan

Annual Conference Proceedings