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Numerous studies have been reported in the published literature on analytical solutions for a vertically loaded pile installed in a homogeneous single soil layer. However, piles are rarely installed in an ideal homogeneous single soil layer. This study presents an analytical model based on the energy-based approach to obtain displacements in an axially loaded pile embedded in multi-layered soil considering soil non-linearity. The developed analytical model incorporating Euler-Bernoulli beam theory proved to be an effective way in estimating the load-displacement responses of piles embedded in multi-layered non-linear elastic soil strata. The differential equations are solved analytically and numerically using the variational principle of mechanics. A parametric study investigated the effect of explicit incorporation of soil properties and layering in order to understand the importance of predicting appropriate pile displacement responses in linear elastic soil system. It is clear from the results that the analyses which consider the soil as a single homogeneous layer will not be able to produce an accurate estimation of the pile stiffnesses. Therefore, it is highly important to account for the effect of soil layering and the non-linear response. The pile displacement response is obtained using the software MATLAB R2019a and the results from the energy-based method are compared with those obtained from the field test data as well as the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) based on the software ANSYS 2019R3. The non-linear elastic constitutive relationship which described the variation of secant shear modulus with strain through a power law has shown reasonably accurate predictions when compared to the published field test data and the FEA. The developed mathematical framework is also more computationally efficient than the three-dimensional (3D) FEA.

Several studies have been reported in published literature on analytical solutions for a laterally loaded pile installed in a homogeneous single soil layer. However, piles are rarely installed in an ideal homogeneous single soil layer. The present study describes a new continuum-based analysis or energy-based approach for predicting the pile displacement responses subjected to static lateral loads and moments considering the soil non-linearity. This analytical analysis treats the pile as an elastic Euler–Bernoulli beam and the soil as a three-dimensional (3D) continuum in which the non-linear elastic properties are described by a modulus degradation relationship. The principle of virtual work was applied to the energy equation of a pile–soil system in order to obtain the governing differential equation for the pile and soil displacements. An iterative procedure was adopted to solve the equations numerically using a finite difference method (FDM). The pile displacement response was obtained using the software MATLAB R2021a, and the results from the energy-based method were compared with those obtained from the field test data as well as the finite element analysis (FEA) based on the software ANSYS Workbench 2021R1. The present study investigated the effect of explicit incorporation of soil properties and layering through a parametric study in order to understand the importance of predicting appropriate pile displacement responses in a linear elastic soil system. The responses indicated that the effect of soil layers and their thicknesses, pile properties and the variation in soil moduli have a direct impact on the displacements of piles subjected to lateral loading. Hence, a proper emphasis has to be given to account for the soil non-linearity. Considering the effect of soil non-linearity, it is observed that the results obtained from the energy-based method agreed well with the field measured values and those obtained from the FEA. The results indicated a difference of approximately less than 7% between the proposed method and the FEA. The approach presented in this study can be further extended to piles embedded in multi-layered soil strata subjected to the combined action of axial loads, lateral loads and moments. Furthermore, the same approach can be extended to study the response of the soil to group piles.

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