Estimation of Seismic Earth Pressure Acting on Stabilizing Piles in Sandy Slopes Considering Soil Arching Effect

The assessment of seismic earth pressure acting on the piles is an important research topic in slope engineering. This study presents a novel pressure-based method for calculating the seismic earth pressure acting on the piles in sandy slopes considering the arching effect. Seismic inertial forces were assumed to be pseudo-static in nature. After analyzing the sliding wedge in the rear of piles, the active seismic earth pressure between two piles was calculated using the horizontal slice method. Furthermore, the arching effect combined with the active seismic pressure was considered to estimate the seismic earth pressure acting on the piles. The proposed method was validated with the model test results from literature under static condition and several other existing methods. The calculated results using the proposed method are examined to be in a better agreement with the test data and exhibit a higher accuracy than the other analytical methods. Parametric study further indicated that the distribution of seismic pressure profile is sensitive to the horizontal seismic acceleration coefficient and pile spacing, other than the vertical seismic acceleration coefficient.