Behavior of Pile Groups Under Lateral Loads in Sand Soil Considering Mohr-Coulomb and Modified Mohr-Coulomb Criterions: Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The behavior of pile groups under lateral loads depends on the soil-structure interaction which is governed by the soil properties and behavior. In the three-dimensional finite element analysis, the prediction of the realistic soil behavior is a complex step in order to capture the realistic pile-soil interaction. In the analysis programs, the soil behavior can be defined using constitutive models like the Mohr-Coulomb constitutive model which is widely used in representing the soil layers in the analysis, but a new modified constitutive model called the Modified Mohr-Coulomb model also used in the analysis along with other constitutive models. The goal of this research is to compare the two constitutive models' capacity to capture the behavior of a full-scale pile group case study and validate the results to field measurements. A good agreement is found between the measured and the computed behavior of pile groups under lateral loads using the Modified Mohr-Coulomb constitutive model.