Investigation of the soil deformation around laterally loaded deep foundations with large diameters

• Published in: Acta geotechnica Vol. 19; no. 4; pp. 2293 - 2314
• Main Authors: Li, Xiaojuan, Dai, Guoliang, Zhu, Mingxing, Zhu, Wenbo, Zhang, Fan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.04.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Bridge foundations; Caissons; Civil engineering; Complex Fluids and Microfluidics; Deformation; Diameters; Engineering; Foundations; Geoengineering; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Highway bridges; Hydraulics; Kinematics; Lateral displacement; Lateral loads; Layered soils; Mathematical analysis; Multilayers; Offshore; Offshore energy sources; Potential energy; Review Paper; Soft and Granular Matter; Soil; Soil layers; Soil modulus; Soil Science & Conservation; Soils; Solid Mechanics; Wind farms; Wind power; Energy-based method; Lateral loads; Soil deformation; Deep foundations
• ISSN: 1861-1125; 1861-1133
• DOI: 10.1007/s11440-023-02012-1

In projects such as highway bridges and offshore wind farms, understanding the kinematics of soil layers and their displacement is important for accurately predicting the behavior of caissons and monopiles under lateral loads. To better predict the distribution of soil deformation around the foundations, this paper presents an extensive usage of the energy-based variational method in laterally loaded deep foundations (caissons or monopiles) with very large diameters. By adding an assumption of soil deformation in multilayered soils, the displacement distribution around the foundations can be better described. The responses of deep foundations were obtained by minimizing the potential energy and virtual work of the foundation-soil system. After that, static lateral loading tests on two caissons with the same embedment depth of 36 m and the same diameter of 6 m were performed, and the displacement field in soils and the deflection profiles of the caissons were measured. Results show that the lateral displacement and the decay distribution fields calculated from the theory in this paper agree with the measured data from the static loading tests and the corresponding finite differential method (FDM) results. At last, a series of case studies performed by MATLAB and FDM analyses were also conducted to study the influence of u z on the response of foundations, as well as the influence of foundation parameters and soil modulus on the value of ϕ z .