Study of the Effect of Slope, Location and Loading Direction of Single Pile on the Lateral Load Capacity

Berthing structures are one of the main facilities constructed in ports, which mainly interact with the incoming vessels while berthing mooring and repairing. The berthing structure and breakwaters constitute most expensive structure in any ports. Soil found in the coastal region is mainly of soft marine clay which is having low shear strength due to consolidation. Hence pile foundation are mostly adopted for the construction of heavy structures in such soil conditions. Most of the coastline surfaces are sloped in nature and the vertical piles are often subjected to lateral loads in addition to axial loads. Soil structure interaction has to be considered as a dominant factor when structure is built on weak soils. In this paper, soil structure interaction of single pile located in a berthing structure was studied numerically with PLAXIS 3D software. The response of pile was analyzed by considering various factors such as magnitude of lateral load, behaviour of ground and sloping surfaces, position of piles, loading direction. In single pile analysis, pile lateral capacity of ground surface and sloping surfaces was compared. It is observed that lateral capacity decreases when surface changes from horizontal to slope.