FAILURE ENVELOPE OF EMBEDDED WALLS IN CLAY SUBJECTED TO COMBINED HORIZONTAL LOAD AND MOMENT

At present, design processes of structures have become complicated such as those in offshore engineering or large bridge structures, etc. Generally, piles used in supporting those structures carry loads not only the vertical load direction, but also the horizontal direction arising from wave forces in the sea, wind loading or forces of earthquake actions. Those forces may result in damages and failures of structures if considering only the vertical direction. This research presents a study of undrained stability of embedded wall in clay subjected to combined horizontal load and moment. The 2D plane strain condition is considered in this analysis. The objective of this research is to determine the failure envelope of embedded wall subjected to horizontal load and moment. The studied parameters include untrained shear strength of the clay layer, the thickness of the wall (D), and wall embedded length (L). The results of analyses are presented in terms of dimensionless graph between normalized horizontal load, moment, and ratio of wall length to thickness (L/D). Finite element software, PLAXIS was used in this analysis. The embedded wall is set to have property of linear elastic material without failure consideration, while the clay is modeled as the Mohr-Coulomb material. The analyses consider ratio of wall length to thickness, ranging from 5-80 for wide practical applications. Series of failure envelopes were determined for each value of L/D. Results of this research can be applied in design and analysis of embedded walls, where their results are more accurate. In addition, they provide preliminary calculations for the similar loading cases of single pile in 3D problems.