Numerical study of basal reinforced embankments supported on floating/end bearing piles considering pile–soil interaction

Abstract Construction sites consisting of soft soils may require ground improvement to prevent excessive settlements or bearing capacity type failures and shear movements, which results in construction delays and premature failures. Among the various ground improvement techniques, the Geosynthetic Reinforced Piled Embankment Systems (GRPES) provide a practical and efficient solution due to the low cost and short construction times. Most of the piled embankments are constructed on end bearing piles. At large depths of foundation soil, floating piles are more economical and technically feasible than the end bearing piles. The design of floating piles involves complex soil–structure interaction and there are no clear uniform guidelines available for the design of embankments supported on floating piles. This paper presents the results of numerical investigation into the performance of geosynthetic reinforced embankments supported on end bearing as well as floating piles considering the pile–soil and geosynthetic–soil interaction. 3-D Column models are employed to carry out the parametric studies on factors such as the development of arching, skin friction distribution along the pile length and axial force distribution. Full three-dimensional analyses are carried out to study the overall behavior of the GRPES system and the results obtained from the analyses were compared with those from British Standard BS8006-2010. The results indicated that the use of floating piles could considerably reduce the settlements and the embankment load transferred through the piles to the foundation soil is found to depend very much on the length of the piles. This aspect needs to be accounted for while calculating the arching factor in the empirical equations.