Abstract

This study presented an experimental work to examine the behavior of a single pile installed in three different types of soil when it is subjected to lateral load. The experimental work was divided into six tests to study the effect of soil layer location on the lateral displacement of the pile by changing soil layer placement surrounding the pile, each layer was taken of a thickness equals to 60 mm and the length of pile is 150 mm. A steel box with dimensions of width (w = 300 mm), length (L = 600 mm and height (H = 1000 mm) was used to perform a laboratory tests. The main conclusions were that the largest lateral displacement corresponding to minimum lateral load was when the sand soil is placed near the surface followed by loam and clay, also, the lateral displacement decreases and the lateral load which can be resisted by the pile increases when the fine soil enclosed the upper first third of the pile. The ideal placement of soil layers was for loam, sand and clay is placed subsequently (Model 6) which has the lateral displacement as a minimum value corresponding to maximum applied lateral load. The results of ideal model (Model 6) were verified with the results obtained by PLAXIS software, the percentages of lateral displacement obtained from PLAXIS 3D software to the experimental work was 88.8% (ultimate displacement from experimental work is 8 mm and from PLAXIS is 9 mm).