FEM Analysis of PHC Piles With Excessive Lateral Displacements Using Winkler Foundation Model

Excessive lateral displacements may occur along the upper parts of PHC piles, when unexpected soil deformations take place during pit excavations.The excessive lateral displacements lead to extra bending moment and shear force along the pile body, which may cause the failure of piles.Acase study is presented to show how to use the winkle beam model to calculate the internal force and deformation of the piles with excessive lateral displacements.FEM analysis results and site tests show that piles with relatively large passive displacements can sustain relatively large loads and usable in some extend, even the displacements are larger than the code permissions.