Large deformation FE analysis of driven steel pipe piles with soil plugging

This paper presents the application of the Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) numerical technique to simulate the driving of open-ended piles into sandy soil. The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of soil plugging on the response of piles embedded in a single layer and in multiple layers. Comprehensive studies to verify the plugging effect are presented in this paper. Through comparison with results of field load tests, the CEL methodology was found to be in good agreement with the general trend observed by in situ measurement, and the CEL approach accurately simulated the behavior of the inner and outer skin friction from the radial stress. Additionally, a parametric study was performed by controlling the pile diameter, driving energy, elastic moduli of the soil and bearing layers, and length of pile embedded in the bearing layer. It was found that the soil plugging index (SPI) and maximum radial stress increased linearly with increasing driving energy and elastic moduli of soil and bearing layers, whereas the pile diameter and the length of pile embedded in the bearing layer were inversely proportional to the SPI. From the parametric studies, it was found that the largest influence was due to the effect of the driving energy, followed by the pile diameter, the length of pile embedded in the bearing layer, the soil elastic modulus, and the elastic modulus of the bearing layer.